Crepes 'n Crepes

She knows from the real thing because she's had the real thing, in France and at home, as made by her mother, who learned the proper balance of butter to lemon to caramelized sugar to liquor in the cafes of Paris, where they've been making crepes for generations. Out loud, Laura recalled how these crepes should have nothing but a whisper of astringent, orange-y alcohol bite, how they ought not be so cloyingly, sickeningly sweet. And she was right, though I knew the wrongness of these crepes only from the other side of the kitchen door. These suffered simply from not being flamed — pouring the Grand Marnier over the hot crepe in the pan and tilting it until the liquor catches fire in a great, whoofing mushroom cloud. While that French crepe griddle (the modern extension of the ancient two-hot-rocks cooking style) is used to wonderful effect at Crepes 'n Crepes, there's one thing you can't do with it: catch a flame. For that, you need a pan, a burner, a fire-starter's soul.

So we pushed the Suzette aside and focused on our blueberries, our sweet, perfumed strawberries, our hot chocolate and ourselves. And while the crowds swirled around us, we sat cramped at our uncomfortable table, mopping up Nutella with scraps of wheat-flour pancake and making big plans for the future — celebrating with the taste of chantilly cream and almond paste on our tongues, the sting of Grand Marnier still lingering in our throats, remembering only why we were here and no longer wondering why we'd stayed away from the crepe for so long.