Whenever my friend Mirander and I meet up, we fall into incredibly girlie stereotypes. We gossip, we shop, we eat desserts. You’ve already followed our expedition for high tea at Robuchon, but now for one of our favourite pit-stops… La Creperie.
Unassumingly tucked away on the first floor of some nondescript serviced apartment building mid-way between Admiralty and Wan Chai, La Creperie is probably Hong Kong’s most authentic purveyor of French crepes – specifically buckwheat pancakes, galettes hailing from Brittany (thinner, larger, darker and crisper than the more conventional ones). Sweet, savoury, seafood, salad… they’ve stuffed them with anything they can get their hands on here… great news for greedy cochons like me, who can opt for crepes as both a main course and dessert!
The room is large and charming in a homely way, with well-worn dark wood furniture and a nautical theme in the décor (lighthouse salt and pepper pots!) that extends to the staff wearing Breton-striped shirts. Mirander and I always go off-peak, around 3pm, when the place is deserted – meaning service can be a little slow (especially as we always seem to find ourselves hidden behind a pillar) but that we can sit and gossip to our heart’s content!
For my main, I always go for Le Four. I just can’t look past any dish that has bacon as its main component! In addition to that deliciously salty shredded bacon, Le Four also contains a mix of slippery earthy diced mushrooms, some obligatory lettuce leaves to make me feel healthy and a creamy ultra more-ish sauce to totally cancel that out. This darling usually gets devoured in ten minutes flat; I just can’t get enough of the light crisp perfect accompaniment of wrapping all that deliciousness in a crepe brings – can I wrap all my food in one please?!
For desserts, Mirander and I fall into yet another girl stereotype – we order one to share. This means both of us get to feel better about halving our calories, whilst ensuring our orgasmic ‘mmmm-ing’ happens at the same time and neither of us get food lust for the other’s dish! There are so many scrumptious-sounding options on La Creperie’s menu, but again, we’ve never yet managed to look past La Defi, which comes topped with baby caramelised chunks of banana, a scoop of caramel ice-cream and lashings of salted caramel.
YES SALTED CARAMEL. I think I may have mentioned my love for salted caramel before. It’s salty, it’s sweet, it’s positively sinful. Gooey sticky unctuous love in liquid form… how could anyone resist?! And at La Creperie, they have that salty-sweet balance absolutely right. The banana’s natural mellow sweetness cuts in at just the right points, whilst the caramel ice-cream is soothingly creamily cool, helping the whole thing wash down with a serene soft sweetness and the occasional crunch of little nuggets of hardened caramel in there too. Heaven.
Savoury crepes clock in around the $100 mark, sweet ones around $50, with some very reasonable lunch and tea set deals available too. They also do a mean homemade lemonade, although alas their jars of salted caramel butter and sweets are no longer available (yes, I’ve tried to buy them, many-a-time!). And in the battle of the creperies between this and the similarly French-run Fleur de Sel in Causeway Bay, Le Creperie is a very easy winner for me – in terms of taste, atmosphere, service, price and pretty much everything else you can think of. I love that you can linger here comfortably for hours and no-one bats an eyelid, although I have heard it gets busy at dinner… so just do what I do an eat your dinner in the middle of the day! It’s also within tempting proximity of Sift Cupcakes, allowing Mirander and I the chance to indulge our girlie impulses even more!
So yes, Mirander and I are total girls. But when desserts, company and long lingering meet-ups are as good as this, I just love being a girl – don’t you?!
All La Creperie locations in Hong Kong:
– 1/F, Kui Chi Mansion, 100-102 Queen’s Road East, Wan Chai, Hong Kong, +852 2529 9280
– G/F, 69 Jervois Street, Sheung Wan, Hong Kong, +852 2679 4666
– 8/F, The L Square, 459-461 Lockhart Road, Causeway Bay, Hong Kong, +852 2898 7123
Through The Looking Glass 
Bacon crepe? Salted caramel? My mouth is watering just reading this. I am so there!
Haha – see you there Liz!