The Best Crepe in Paris

I've set out to make this blog not entirely about food, but mostly about my relationship to cooking and how it affects my life. This next post, for most people, would be about the best crepe they've ever had in their lives. And for me, you will see that some of this post is about the best crepe I've ever had in my life. But additionally, you will see how that crepe lead to the immediate resentment of other people eating inferior crepes. Ok, here we go...

I'd heard of L'Avant Comptoir and the fabulous wine bar spread they have. I'd penciled it in as a place to go after watching it on Anthony Bourdain's special on Paris. However, when I arrived today at around 2 o'clock with a friend, it was packed. It also happened to be about 70 degrees and sunny in Paris on the 31st of October, so drinking at a wine bar inside was not as attractive as immediately thought. But then, boo-yah bitches: L'Avant Comptoir had a crepe take-out window. Now, typically in Paris, at every other one of the 700 crepe stands, you have your basic options of ham, cheese, egg, and maybe some veggies, along with the dessert crepe varieties. But at L'Avant Comptoir, the ingredient choices were off the chain: roasted red pepper, sun dried tomatoes, artichokes, rotisserie chicken, FILET OF BEEF, smoked and cured spanish ham, veal, and on and on. Most crepe places give you the choice of "cheese"... L'Avant Comptoir had 5 different cheese options. So, needless to say, my friend and I bought our crepes (mine filled with rotisserie chicken, artichokes, gruyere cheese, salt and pepper... simply because I was limited to 3 ingredients with the lunch special) and headed to Luxembourg Gardens to walk around for a while soaking in the day.

It was the best crepe I've had in my 8 months in this city... BY FAR. I immediately felt stupid for even telling people where to go to get a good crepe. Now, let's make it clear that I'm not hating on my Bretagne friends on Rue du Montparnasse, who serve up some damn good crepes in their own right. But they're traditional and delicious, which is great, but not the best. These crepes at L'Avant Comptoir, which for 6 euros come with a drink at lunch, make your head spin around. Buckwheat batter (essential for any REAL crepe) combined with actual ingredients make these things absurdly good. Most creperies believe that they can cut corners because they are a cheap take-away food category, but L'Avant elevates the take-away variety into a whole new stratosphere. Ok, you get it, they're good. Now comes the part where eating the best crepe in Paris ruined my afternoon.

After eating this delicious crepe, I found myself walking in a very crepe-heavy part of Paris... the Saint-Germain Saint-Michel HELL corridor where my Social Loathing Disorder is at its peak. To clarify, a friend and I have determined that we share SLD in common - that is, Social Loathing Disorder. SLD can rear its head in many forms, including something as trivial as simple social anxiety, to something as malicious as generally disliking someone you don't even know because they're eating the wrong crepe... and that's what happened today. As I was walking through the Hell corridor, I found myself judging people based on the fact that I knew they were eating an inferior crepe to mine. I was making sly remarks about how much of a jackass a guy was because I heard him mentioning how good the ham was in his crepe... which I knew was the same ham I had eaten countless time at other dogshit crepe stands. Much like the Chorizo incident, I felt like slapping all of the crepes out of everyone's hands like a ferocious game of arcade alligators... you remember, where you held the mallet and you had to whack the alligators on their heads before they got too close to you... ok maybe that was just in Florida. But seriously, the realization that everyone around me was eating a second-rate crepe legitimately ruined my afternoon... ok, not really, but it got me fired up for a little bit. And it led me to 2 reoccurring conclusions:

1. I'm extremely judgmental because just 2 hours previous, I could have very easily stopped for a quick bite of a now-average crepe and been one of those food-illiterate people, and...

2. I need to open up a restaurant or store-front that specializes in doing something simple, but taking it to a whole new unforeseen level.

What today taught me was that there really is nothing better than thinking you have tasted the best of something, only to taste something even better. This is how I feel about cuisine... I constantly think that I've had the best _______ of my life, and then I go somewhere better or make something better. It's why I keep doing it.