Eating Out: La Creperie Cafe and Bakery, Long Beach

So a week ago on Friday night and for lunch last Saturday my girlfriend and I ate at a French "creperie" (a restaurant specializing in crepes, apparently, though I'm not sure there are actual creperies in France) in the Belmont Shore area of Long Beach called, appropriately enough, La Creperie Cafe and Bakery.

For readers who don't know Long Beach all that well, Belmont Shore is a long stretch of upscale stores and restaurants that goes down 2nd St. and is only a couple of blocks north of the harbor. It has a variety of restaurants, from Middle Eastern and Thai to French and Italian. My girlfriend and I have spent more time there now that we're in Long Beach, and so far we've had nothing but good dining experiences there.

First things first, I'm a novice when it comes to French food, classical or otherwise. My family background is mostly a hodge-podge of Southern- and Eastern-European cultures with some Irish thrown in for good measure, and my parents' families grew up mainly in the Midwest (my parents grew up largely in California). As a result, I ate meat-and-potatoes, Italian and the occasional Chinese or Mexican meal growing up. Until I actually visited France, in the way of French food I think I made a so-so Coq Au Vin during my sophomore year of high school and probably ate at least one other "French" meal somewhere during those first 16 years of my life.

Thankfully, my family, especially my mom, has always encouraged trying food from other cultures, so by the time I actually visited France I wasn't one of those Americans who spent my time looking for the nearest McDonalds'. Still, although I spent about a week in France when I was in college, I was eating on a student's budget and didn't get all that much exposure to "classic" French cuisine. I was lucky enough to be invited along for dinner with a family in Paris who were family friends of my friend, Seth (who was studying in Paris at the time). Dinner was steak tartare, and actually pretty good, and a fantastic warm vegetable salad with some sort of vinaigrette dressing. It was a memorable experience.

The other "memorable" experience I had with French food was in Grenoble. After finishing off a crepe bolognese I ended up with food poisoning. Unfortunately, I didn't really sleep the night I got food poisoning and the next day my girlfriend and I were supposed to be leaving Grenoble to return to Paris. I wasn't in any condition to travel, but friends in the area, and my girlfriend, helped me make it through the day.

Needless to say, my opinions of French food have been somewhat favorable though mixed. I haven't gone out of my way to seek out meals or restaurants from this cuisine, which, after having visited La Creperie Cafe and Bakery, is my loss.

So, the first meal I ate there was the Rive Gauche panini (Rive Gauche, i.e. "left bank"). What exactly does that have to do with a sandwich? I'm not entirely sure, but the sandwich was good. It was filled with sliced turkey, melted brie and cranberry relish. The panini bread was light, crusty but not tough, and fresh. The brie was melted and had a great creamy flavor but wasn't rubbery. The cranberry relish added a slight sweet-and-sour tang to the sandwich that gave it the extra flavor that pushed it beyond a good sandwich to a great sandwich. The sandwich came with garlic and parsley-seasoned fries that had actual pieces of chopped garlic hiding among them. The fries were crisp but not greasy and were, like the bread, fresh. The salad was a simple one, with tomatoes, cucumbers, dark greens, red onions and chopped tomatoes in a balsamic vinaigrette. I was impressed with my first meal there, as I wasn't expecting a sandwich and fries to be as good as they were.

My girlfriend got the Assiette de Charcuterie et Fromage, which basically means a plate with meat and cheese on it, but oh what a plate of meat and cheese it was. The plate came with three types of cheese (Roquefert, brie and some other kind of medium-sharp cheese with a hard rind), two types of pate, a basket of fresh slices of baguette bread and dark rye, small pickles, kalamata olives and dijon mustard on the side. All of it was good and there was more than enough for one person. My girlfriend doesn't eat huge amounts so for $11.50 we ended up taking about 1/3rd of the cheese and pate home.

For dessert (and we were overdoing it at this point, though it was still good) we had the crepe Tatin, a sweet crepe filled with sliced apples and topped with fresh whipped cream and cinnamon. We had decaf coffee to go with the crepe and we managed to roll ourselves out of the place.

The second meal we had there was much simpler, though I didn't enjoy it quite as much. I decided to try a crepe bolognese and conquer my seven-year-old fear of that meal. Although I successfully conquered my fear of that particular meal, the crepe was...decent but not spectacular. It had a somewhat sweet-and-sour flavor that seemed a little odd. Maybe it wasn't what I was expecting.

My girlfriend ordered a sandwich with mozzarella and a basil and tomato spread. She enjoyed it and we decided to quit while we were ahead. All in all, a good first meal and a relatively decent second one.

La Creperie Cafe and Bakery
4911 E. 2nd St.
Long Beach, CA 90803
(562) 434-8499
www.lacreperiecafe.net