Peo­ple always ask me if I miss French food — hon­estly, I don’t. A lot of for­eign­ers have such an exotic view of French cui­sine that it’s hard to explain them French don’t always eat bet­ter than other cul­tures. Sure, French value food — but so do Chi­nese, Japan­ese, Argen­tinean etc. Daily meals do revolve around bread and but­ter and yes, there are cool pas­tries every­where but most peo­ple don’t eat fancy stuffs all the time.

The only meal I some­times miss is crêpes. Yes, it sounds a bit like “crap” but trust me, it’s really good.

Crêpes are Brittany’s spe­cialty and crêperies can be found every­where in Nantes. These very thin pan­cakes are made from flour, eggs, milk, but­ter, and a pinch of salt. Nor­mally, crêpes are slightly sweeet and galettes are unsweet­ened: the first one is served as dessert and the sec­ond one is the main meal. They are tra­di­tion­ally served with very cold cider.

Com­mon fill­ings for galettes include ham, cheese and egg, or even spinach, salmon, cream, arti­choke, sausages… com­bi­na­tion are end­less! Tra­di­tional dessert crêpes are eaten with but­ter and sugar, and Nutella (the famous hazel­nut spread) is also a favorite.

When I first took Feng to a crêperie, I fig­ured noth­ing could go wrong. After all, he is not very picky and we had some weird food when trav­el­ing, so what could go wrong with a thin pan­cake and basic fill­ings such ham, cheese and egg? Well, the egg. See, French don’t cook eggs fully, so that the yolk can be mixed with the other fill­ings and the crêpe. Funny thing is, I always cook every­thing very well, espe­cially meat and fish but for some rea­son barely cooked eggs don’t gross me out. I guess food is cultural!

You can fol­low our French trip here on Flickr: France (2010).

Two bolées of cider

Feng’s crêpe: mush­rooms, ham and herbs

Cold Cider

Mine: egg, ham, cheese, onion and tomatoes

Related arti­cles:

1. French Cui­sine
2. The Picky Eaters
3. Is The French Diet Still A Good Diet?
4. A French Market
5. St Lawrence Market