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Sarah Hendrickx crepes round the
back streets to eat at Cripes!
 This is another one of those
places which confounds the rules of location being of prime
importance in a restaurant's success. Cripes! is tucked up a
residential street between Montpelier Road and Dyke Road but
manages to do a roaring trade. Picture the scene if you will:
it's dark, cold and pouring with rain, but there in the distance
is a warm orange glow from an oasis of aromas of delicious food
and the sound of gay laughter and chat. How could we not be
lured into such utopia?
Cripes! does crepes and gallettes
- savoury buckwheat pancakes, and they do them well. The choice
is limitless, if none of the plentiful choices on the menu
tickle your tastebuds, then make up your own concoction from
around 40 fillings.
There are loads of vegetarian
choices. I had a gallette packed with chicken livers in red wine
with basil, garlic and spinach. Each one comes like a
well-stuffed envelope with a very nice salad and beautiful
home-made dressing and costs about seven quid. Anthony chose
smoked salmon, caviar and sour cream. He preferred mine and I
preferred his, so we swapped. I drank St Clements, he drank
lovely Breton cider of which Cripes! has a couple of varieties.
The wine list is reasonable and they can also knock up a
cocktail or two, but the cider is really worth a swig.
The restaurant is small and cosy
and seats about 20, but they have a basement room for parties.
The waiter was charming and informative, but not French in the
slightest, which is always a disappointment. Service is good but
as everything is cooked fresh to order, your food takes a while
to appear, which is fine for a relaxed kind of evening. It had a
lovely atmosphere and a mix of sounds from Ricky Martin to The
Beatles.
Again, plenty of ready-made
suggestions for the sweet crepes for pud, but if that's not good
enough, create your own. Anthony had a banana, rum and squirty
cream crepe and I had ice cream and chocolate sauce on mine. It
was huge and filled with ice cream. It was very pretty as well.
It's a busy little joint and
needs to be booked, even mid-week. Anthony really liked it and
he's harder to please than I am.
So, Cripes! has achieved true
greatness. Again, as always, we leave fatter and happier than
when we came in.
Cripes!
7 Victoria Road, Brighton
Tel: 01273 327878
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It had been a hard day in the
office. Sod it, I thought, who wants to go home and cook dinner
- I'm off for a curry. Luckily I work just around the corner
from Goa. Sadly, there is no alcohol licence but you can bring
your own - I didn't so had to make do with a Coke.