Cafes / Reviews
Cr?pe Affaire – cafe review
Students milled around outside the Wills Memorial Building in gowns, proud parents lurking nearby as their sons and daughters were about to become Bristol graduates.
If camera bulbs still flashed, that is what would have been happening.
It should have been a bonanza time for Crêpe Affaire located just over the road, but even the offer of free coffee samples only tempted three other people other than me to walk through the doors on Thursday morning in the half an hour I was inside.
The sweet toothed of Bristol are once again being spoiled rotten following the recent openings of Coco’s Desserts on Stapleton Road, Sundaes Gelato on Baldwin Street and Kaspa’s Desserts on Park Street.
The questions are whether Bristol firstly has the appetite for so many of these new openings, and secondly whether anything can work in this seemingly cursed corner of town for food and drink which sees cafes and delis appear and disappear with alarming regularity.
Crêpe Affaire’s stock in trade is of course crêpes, with options starting at £2.95 for cinnamon up to £5.35 for the intriguingly named I’ll Have What She’s Having (strawberries, chocolate and cream).
My Bananalicious (£4.95) was filled with Nutella and sliced bananas. Rather meagre in size for its price, I finished it within a few bites. The batter was quite rubbery and the pancake was no better than you could make after a few efforts at home on Shrove Tuesday.
It’s not all sweet options here, however, with breakfast options including The Londoner (scrambled egg, cheddar and bacon), and maple and bacon; and savoury choices such as ham and cheese and Le Goat Deluxe, sadly with goat’s cheese rather than goat’s meat.
Cramped seating in a downstairs corner nearest the window was where the three other guests squeezed next to me.
But there’s also a larger upstairs area, with brown leather banquettes and wire mesh on the walls for decoration with hessian coffee bags artfully draped on top.
Passing by later in the day, there were more people inside Crêpe Affaire, but this new cafe is going to have to fight hard to compete with Boulangerie and Nero directly either side of it, especially opening as it has when the steady stream of students in this part of town have departed Bristol for the summer clutching their graduation scrolls.
Crêpe Affaire, 5 Queen’s Road, Clifton, Bristol, BS8 1QE