Editor's Rating
Hello, everyone! If you are following our Instagram, you have probably noticed that we had a short trip to Ho Chi Minh City (or formerly known as Saigon), Vietnam, earlier this month. We only spent 3D2N there and clearly it was not enough but we visited few places that are worth sharing on the blog. One of them is this beautiful place called La Crêperie, a French-style restaurant serving galette, crepe and freshest seafood.
La Crêperie is first established by Philippe Ricard in Shanghai, with a logo of lighthouse, a symbol of Brittany, France’s northwesternmost region. After the success in Shanghai, nowadays La Crêperie has opened in Hong Kong, Saigon, Phnom Penh, and Taipei. FYI, in Jakarta (PIK area) I remember there is also a restaurant with the same name, but there is no relation whatsoever with this La Crêperie we are reviewing right now.
La Crêperie Saigon is located in District 1 (yes, they use “district” to mention the neighborhoods/areas in the city, cool, no?) in a clean and organized area which seems to be a “Japan Town”. There are lines of shops and restaurants with Japanese writings signage, so finding La Crêperie here was actually easy since the building and lighthouse logo kinda stands out.
The restaurant itself is not too big but there are several floors available for dine-in. We were seated on the first floor, where the ambience is quite nice although it is a bit too dark. As La Crêperie aims to recreate the sensation of traditional Brittany’s atmosphere, a strong touch of nautical decoration is clearly visible there. At some point, I was thinking that I was inside a ship with dark-colored wooden floor and all the decorative hanging lamps also successfully added the intensity of the nautical atmosphere. Shortly said, it feels like I entered different world when I stepped into the restaurant for the first time.
But my heart goes to these cute lighthouse-shaped salt and pepper shakers, and the cup! CUTE!
For the food, La Crêperie specializes in galette, crepe, sandwiches, even seafood like mussels and oysters which I heard are imported directly from Brittany, France. The menu selection is crazy, I must say, and it was a tough call to pick one or two only from all the selection they have. I didn’t remember the price of each items we ordered but I think the price starts from IDR 30,000 and up.
Galette is a form of French pancake made with buckwheat flour and usually served with savory filling. I was excited to try this as I expected this similar to crepe, but in fact, it’s not. While galette is usually made larger, crepe is smaller and usually filled with something sweet. The galette has many variety for the fillings, but rest assured, there will be meat, salad, cheese, with or without eggs.
Galette with Parma Ham and Parmesan Cheese VND 160,000
La Saint Quay
Bacon, Emmental cheese, sunny side up egg, salad.
Galette with Smoked Salmon and Goat Cheese VND 210,000
I think the galette was fantastic. In term of texture, it was perfectly done, means it was not crispy nor soggy, but we still enjoyed the crust and softness. It is easily cut and folded, very convenient to eat. Everything we tried above was really good, except the goat cheese in the salmon galette: it was unpleasantly smelly, and even Mr. K who usually takes any smelly cheese didn’t like this.
For the desserts, we tried 2 items that were strongly recommended to us, and we couldn’t agree more!
Salted Butter Caramel Crepe
The crepe is clearly much smaller in size compared to galette, but it was already filling because it’s accompanied with something sweet. This Salted Butter Caramel Crepe is the most basic sweet crepe menu they have (without additional topping like fruits, cream etc) but we were told that this is definitely the MUST ORDER item when we visit this place.
The texture was similar to the galette, a lot softer because the sauce already absorbed into the crepe, in a good way. The salted butter caramel taste was simply divine. It was a collaboration of butterscotch flavor enhanced in the sweetness of caramel, oh my! I would definitely go back here just for the sake of this crepe. XD
Sweet Crepe with Strawberry, Mango, Pear VND 120,000
This crepe was very familiar to us because it looks more like crepes that we can easily find in Jakarta. The texture was also soft with a little bit of crust on the edges, served with fruits of our choice before topped with chocolate and whipped cream. All I can say is that the desserts rocked!
We didn’t get to try the other food beside galette and crepe, so it might be too early to judge that the desserts are better than the mains. However, from other photos, we can see that the other food look extremely fine and well-presented, so we may as well return someday to try more of their dishes.
Staffs are mostly locals but they can understand English a bit. Most importantly, the staffs are very friendly and the orders were delivered to our table within 10-15 minutes. So yes, there are many reasons to visit this cute little place when you happen to be in HCMC! 😉
1 Vietnamese Dong (VND) = IDR 0.64 (per September 2015)
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*The Food Escape team are not paid whatsoever for writing this post.
** This review is written based on our visit on 3 September 2015.
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LA CREPERIE
17/7 Le Thanh Ton, District 1,
Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon)
Vietnam
Ph. +84 8 3824 7070
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