Crépe Me An Offer I Can't Refuse
Yorkville Creperie | 1586 York Ave. (bet. 83rd & 84th Sts.) | 212.570.5445 | yorkvillecreperienyc.com
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[mappress]
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I AM A native New Yorker. In Manhattan alone, I have lived in Morningside Heights, Washington Heights, Gramercy, Chelsea, Carnegie Hill, Murray Hill, Hell's Kitchen, and the Financial Disctrict. I've slept for months at a time (crashed) in places anywhere from Trump Park on Central Park South to a bar basement office to the subway.
Not to be depressing; the point being that it is a small miracle that I have find long-time comfort living in the Upper East Side's neighborhood of Yorkville for almost 15 years. It's, yes, very homogenous, and I guess that's how we all like it up here.
Everything we could possibly need is within a 10 minute stroll or 20 minute delivery (we have a Food Emporium or Gristede's or some Eli Zabar incarnation every 3 blocks, yet we still feel we need Fresh Direct!).
Except something new and different. This neighborhood is so overrun by Chinese/pizza/sushi/Thai places that a Hummus Kitchen can turn out to be the only restaurant to not only open in a recession—and in a neighborhood where seemingly all food is served with rice, bread/pasta, tortillas, or just flat out fried—but is packing it's capacity on an almost nightly basis—and deservedly so.
Admittedly I never expected Hummus Kitchen to do well. I read magazines like Time Out New York for listings of new, cool, better-than-good food places seem to pop up every where else besides Yorkville. So much so that I have to reserve 2–3 hour blocks of time just to go check one out (and, of course, write about it).
So imagine my happy surprise to see, in an article in this week's New York Magazine, a listing for a positively-reviewed créperie (?!) just two blocks from my front door!
The place is called Yorkville Créperie, and it is so conveniently close—on 84th Street & York Avenue—that I made a mental appointment to go try its fare only minutes after I read the article about it.
I knew I was in for something delightfully different when I saw this SoHo-friendly facade:
All that was missing was the two leggy 17-year old models/BFFs from Iceland sitting adjacent to each other yet having completely separate text conversations. I walked in, and the place was as quaint as its facade promised, and the bouquet of freshly made crépes was still welcomingly present in the air.
After reassuring the staff that I was actually there to eat and not just creepily take photos, I was offered a menu that contained a healthy number of stuffed crepe choices, savory or sweet. I was amenable to all the options, but figured, if I was going to do both savory and sweet, I was going to go for both extremes.
For my savory, I ordered the Roma, with chicken, mozzarella, and tomato bruschetta in an herbed crépe. The waitress was very sweet, formal and attentive, as was the rest of the staff.
I sat down at a nicely decorated table by the window and ruminated over which female companion I would have invited to join me if I were in more of a socially charitable mood. Any one of them would have enjoyed it:
The crépes are made to order—you could watch them being made if you'd like—and come out quickly, hot, and looking like this:
And like this on the inside after a couple of yummy bites:
Suffice to say, I cleaned my plate. The crepe was nicely light and airy, the whole plate had a great, aroma, the mozzarella didn't overwhelm the dish and the bites of chicken were firm, juicy, and were brightened by the topping of chopped tomatoes with olive oil.
I was worried that I had ruined my appetite for dessert, but would order one anyway and try to enjoy at least a few bites. The sweet crépe option I chose was actually something called The Sweet Crépe, which contained—brace yourself—cinnamon-baked apples, graham cracker crumbs, cornflakes and white chocolate drizzle, all topped off with a scoop of vanilla ice cream! Yes, and it looked like this:
I believe I finished that too; I was so heady with delight I can't seem to remember! This was all about contrasts. Texture (the soft, billowy crépe, the firm yet melt-in-your-mouth apples, the still crunchy corn flakes), temperature (the cold but not frozen, creamy ice cream, again, the warm, cake-y crépe and hot apples), was a mouth orgy, and all without being heavy, too rich, or overly sweet!
The owner/chef is a talented and affable young gentleman named Chris Boyce who was so impressed to hear that his 2-month old place was listed in New York Magazine, and that some neighborhood yoke actually was interested in doing a blog about his place, that he actually, graciously comped my meal.
I, in turn, am going to provide him with a link to the blog, of course, and copies of the pictures that I took (you can see the complete set of pictures from Yorkville Créperie here in my Flickr photoset.
I will be going back soon and often. It is rare that I can pursue a culinary whim and have the time to do it. So I'm open. Anyone care to join me for my next visit? Ladies...?
Bun Apple Tea!
.kac.
Yorkville Creperie | 1586 York Ave. (bet. 83rd & 84th Sts.) | 212.570.5445 | yorkvillecreperienyc.com
