New French creperie, Breizh Cafe, opened its doors at the Ainslie shops yesterday. With specialties from the French region of Brittany, Breizh Cafe offers crepes, galettes (crepes made with buckwheat flour), croissants, pain au chocolat and other pastries along with a range of French cider and whisky.
Located in the corner of the Ainslie Shops, there seems to be quite a lot of seating indoors and a few tables outside. The fit out inside is simple and clean. The wooden counter is close to the front door and there is a little bench for those waiting for take away coffee.
I like the interesting feature wall of stones arranged along the entire wall.
There is a breakfast (8am-11am) and lunch menu (12 noon to 2pm). Apart from crepes, breakfast includes items like omelettes, pork sausage with cassoulet style white beans with a toasted baguette (sounds great!), and the Big French Breakfast consisting of croissant, brioche and baguette slices with butter and jam.
The lunch menu looks tasty too – snails anyone?
Since I was there at 10am with friends, we could only choose items from the breakfast menu. There is only one option for a savoury galette – the ham and cheese ($11), so I ordered this and added mushrooms ($2) and egg ($2). Orders are taken and paid for at the counter. The galette is a great gluten-free option. This was my first time trying a galette so there is nothing to compare it to. But I thought it was fresh and almost omelette-like with the ingredients I chose. Tasty but not enough to fill me up.
Food porn of my friends’ meals – all crepes are made fresh. Soft and fluffy. Really nice!
The Breizh Spicy Hot Chocolate ($5) caught my attention. Three of us ordered it, however there must have been a mix up as two of us received normal hot chocolates (we were wondering where the spice was), and only one of us received the real spicy hot chocolate. The normal hot chocolate was creamy and a bit thick – a really yummy hot chocolate without the extreme level of sweetness you can get from places like Max Brenner. I sipped on my friend’s spicy hot chocolate which was lighter in colour compared to the normal hot chocolate. There was some cinnamon and definitely some spice in it. To be honest, I don’t think I would’ve been able to finish it.
There is also a small display counter at the front with some yummy looking pastries inside.
The lunch crepe menu looks great and I’m keen to go back and try it – the prawns, leek and cider sauce sounds interesting…or perhaps the snails. And I’ll probably order the sweet crepes afterwards 🙂
Wait staff are dressed in crisp white shirts, comfy jeans and the Breizh Cafe apron. Our meals arrived very quickly (less than 10 minutes from ordering). Besides the mix up with the spicy hot chocolate, service was good – tap water and glasses provided and our plates promptly cleared.
A crepe is a crepe, so portions are naturally small and didn’t fill any of us up completely. I could have ordered another one or two. I think the French creperie fills a gap in the food scene, and will be a great place for afternoon tea if you like sweet crepes. But perhaps don’t go if you’re starving unless you order a couple of serves.
Foodgasm 7/10
