Flavours all wrapped up

After making its name with chic bistros in Siam Square, Ekamai and at Siam Paragon, Vanilla Group is promoting its latest outlet called Vanilla Crepe Cafe as a place of pilgrimage on Ram Indra-Ekamai Road to enjoy all-day crepes, both savoury and sweet.

Most of us think of crepes as a sweet treat, but Vanilla Crepe Cafe on the second floor of the Crystal Mall, offers a range of flavours that go way beyond the usual vanilla, chocolate and strawberry. You can try crepes with such fanciful stuffing as tonkatsu (deep-fried pork cutlet), Japanese pancake okonomiyaki, slightly seared salmon or California roll.

The crepes here are made in Japanese style with a crispy texture and there are 50-odd choices on the menu. You can hold and eat your crepe while you are on the go, savour it for breakfast or dinner or give yourself a sugar boost with a refreshing sundae crepe.

The parlour is designed to resemble a mini loft with the wood and black leather decor hinting at Scandinavian chic and giving off a retro yet stylish ambience. It’s self-service, so customers place their orders at the counter but as making the crispy crepe with stuffing requires time – about 15 minutes a pop - the staff bring your order to the table.

Dishes are served on white biodegradable foam ware and in takeaway plastic box though each table sports stainless steel cutlery. The full colour-illustrated menu is for distribution, so feel free to take yours home.

There are eight choices of savoury and sweet rolls each priced at Bt150. Among the pungent stuffings are spicy tomato, chicken curry, pate and wasabi prawn roe while the sweet treats include banoffee caramel, strawberry azuki bean, white choc raspberry and cherry cream cheese.

Breakfast crepes (Bt220) come in four choices: fried egg, ham, spinach, garlic, mushroom and cheese and scrambled eggs with bacon and spinach. My personal favourite’s the sausages rolled in crepes and topped with maple syrup.

“Thais love Japanese food and Vanilla Group has its own recipes for lasagna crepe or cream sauce seafood, both of which have received positive feedback from customers. We also have a Japanese-fusion restaurant in Ekamai and we find it challenging to combine crepes with Japanese-inspired recipes,” says chef Apirada Wongsakul.

“First of all, we think about which Japanese dishes Thais love the most then try to adapt the ingredients so that they go well with the batter. Crepe batter is usually sweet as it’s based on brown sugar, flour, egg and milk. For the savoury crepe, we add soy sauce to reduce the sweetness and we also get a thinner and crispy texture.”

Tasting rather like salmon sushi, Aburi Salmon Crepe (Bt320) is stuffed with slightly seared salmon, kaiware sprouts, nori seaweed, salmon roe and wasabi sauce. Okonomiyaki or Japanese pizza, sees the prawn, octopus, ham, bacon and shredded cabbage mixed with okonomiyaki sauce and mayonnaise and topped with dried fish flake, nori seaweed and pickled ginger – all wrapped in a crepe (Bt260).

If you prefer something sweet, the menu offers eight sundae crepes. Matcha fresh fruit (Bt250) is refreshing thanks to its green tea ice cream, matcha mousse, fresh strawberry, peach, banana and dangko – Japanese dumping- and is served with red bean sauce. Another pleasing choice is Mont Blanc (also Bt250) where the vanilla ice cream is topped with whipped cream, chestnut cream and chestnut and white chocolate sauce.

If you don’t want a crepe, opt for the spaghetti. I thoroughly enjoyed my serving of spaghetti hijiki (Bt180), pasta cooked with roasted chilli paste mixed with sesame oil, served with minced prawn and hijiki – sea seaweed – and topped with nori seaweed – making it just sharp enough for the Thai palate. Another tempting sauces are mushroom cream matcha, chestnut Bolognese and Napoli.

The home-made soups don’t only taste good but are also colourful. Green soups are made from either spinach or pesto, while the pale pink of chicken and ham soup is obtained from beetroot. The bright yellow soup is, of course, pumpkin.

Healthy salads are also available and include potato and greens, Caesar, Japanese mixed salad, and tuna with wasabi dressing (Bt180-Bt240). But the star is cold somen (Bt240) where angel hair spaghetti is used as a substitute for the thin Japanese somen noodle and cooked with grilled salmon, salmon roe, shimeji mushroom, kaiware sprout, nori seaweed and dressed with mayonnaise and somen sauce.

Available only at this outlet is Tokyo honey cake (Bt120 a slice). It’s a honey cheesecake that comes in a selection of 10 flavours like matcha, azuki red bean, black sesame, rum raisin, cherry and lemon. Each flavour is paired with a selection of sauces, among them honey, berry, mango peach, white chocolate and salty caramel.

You can pair your meal with coffee, tea, milk and frappe as well as frost and soda. But the best choices are either green tea or soy milk. Must-tries are hot matcha soy milk latte (Bt95), Mont Blanc tea frappe topped with chestnut cream (Bt110) and salty caramel frappe (Bt150).

PASSION FOR PANCAKES
Vanilla Crepe Cafe is on the second floor of the Crystal Mall on Ram Indra-Ekamai Road. It’s open daily from 11am to 10pm. Call (02) 515 0944 or visit www.VanillaIndustry.com.