The Crepe Man

Yeaah, the crepe man...

For the last few weeks, there has been a street vendor outside my apartment with a crepe setup. When I walk by, I see him deftly spreading a thin crepe out on his stone, or maybe I notice a crepe sprinkled with egg and scallion.

Mmm. Egg and scallion crepe, I think. I'll have to try that. I know it won't have cheese, but a girl can't have everything all the time, can she?

Today was the day. I'm almost out of cereal, I don't teach for a couple of hours, and it's cold. And, it's just time to get out there and eat some more street food. I mean, really, street food is always where it's at. And if this town has anything, it's street food. (But no, I am not lining up for a deep-fried scorpion on a stick, deep-fried though it might be. They are not even battered!)

I stopped by the man, said hello, and pointed at his empty griddle. Off he went. A quick pour of batter and like the pro that he is, he had it spread out into a think circle within seconds. Egg cracked and spread onto the batter. A sprinkle of parsley and onions and we let it cook. Yum. And then things got weird.

He took his little putty knife and release the crepe and then whoosh! flipped it over. (Huh?) Then, before I knew what was happening, on went the ubiquitous red bean paste sauce stuff. The Chinese seem to love it because they put it on everything; us Westerners find it a slightly off tasting. Then, he asked about his other pot of stuff and I realized he was asking about the hot sauce. I'm a solidly mild to medium sort of girl, and what the Chinese consider mild I consider hot. I can eat it hot, but I have to slow way down hot. So just a little, little bit I motioned with my glove-clad fingers. He giggled to himself about the wimpy Western girl (maybe I'm making that part up), and gave the crepe a little brush. Then he put on 3-4 leaves of green leaf lettuce and 3-4 rectangularish crispy things. My office mate just told me the crispy things are friend bread -- like thin rectangles of savory doughnut (which I still need to find and try). 

Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. And the crepe got an extra fold (since it is now puffed full of lettuce and crispy thing) into a little plastic baggie.

The total cost? 3 kwai. (I might have given him 4, since three of them were crispy and all stuck together and I had gloves on and was holding a cup of coffee.) That's $.45 or the price of a 20 oz. Tsing Tao.  

And, it doesn't taste too bad, either. The dough is a little spongy and some bits are hotter than others. The bean paste isn't too intrusive, but the lettuce is completely limp and the crispy doughnut isn't so crispy anymore. I'd probably still like it better with an extra egg and some cheese and nothing after the crepe-flip, but I'm not giving up yet. It takes at least three tries to really like something, so I have at least two more crepes in my future.