Island Creperie's buckwheat crêpe with bacon, eggs and cheese / COOPER LEVEY-BAKER
Island Creperie
127 Bridge St., Bradenton Beach
778-1011 or bistrotfl.com
Open 8:30 a.m.-2 p.m. daily
This is the umpteenth entry in a weekly column dedicated to eats that are cheap. If you have an idea for a place to feature in Cheap Eats, comment below, email me at cheapeatssrq@gmail.com or hit me up on Twitter: @LeveyBaker.
Bradenton Beach is not exactly a place I'd expect to find posters repping the old boho lifestyle of Montmartre or the wonders of the Seine, but here I am eating breakfast at the Island Creperie.
Island Creperie French Bistrot's sweet crêpe / COOPER LEVEY-BAKER
The small breakfast and lunch café sits on the south side of Bridge Street, one of the main drags of this small Anna Maria Island town. Down at the end of the street lies the city pier, which juts out into the bay. Down the other way, a roundabout takes you north or south or straight out to the beach. The street is line with restaurants and shops and attractions like the quite-fun Fish Hole Miniature Golf course. I'm dining during the island's slow tourist season; Bridge Street is mostly deserted right now. In fact, inside the Island Creperie, I'm all alone.
The restaurant's interior is purple—very purple—with purple walls everywhere and purple-painted bricks in a small side room decorated with a giant black-and-white photo of the City of Light. From where I'm seated, I can look all the way back into the small kitchen or gaze out the window at the glorious Drift In dive bar, situated just across the street.
As you might expect, the crêpe menu here runs deep, with dozens of savory and sweet varieties running from $3.30 to $9.10. For a mix of both salt and sugar, I'm chowing down on the "sweet and sour breakfast" ($7.99), which includes one maple-and-sugar crêpe and one stuffed with eggs and cheese and your choice of ham, sausage, bacon, turkey or tomatoes.
The heartier crêpes come in buckwheat flour wrappers. Frankly, they don't look very appetizing at first. Before I cut it open, my egg 'n' bacon item looks like just a rectangle of gray and brown dough, mottled with brown bits in a pattern that resembles a topographical map. Not that the dough doesn't taste good—far from it. The buckwheat crêpe is soft but chewy, with a lovely toasted flavor. A little thicker than the ethereal, lace-rimmed crêpes of my imagination, but totally delicious. Mozzarella cheese binds everything together inside, and the bacon has remained crisp despite the steam. One of my eggs is overcooked, but the other has stayed gooey. Not even totally sure how that's possible.
Island Creperie French Bistrot / COOPER LEVEY-BAKER
The sweet portion of my "sweet and sour" breakfast is a "white crêpe," i.e. made with regular flour, not buckwheat flour. As a result, its flavor more closely resembles that of a pancake, particularly when showered with powdered sugar and drizzled with maple syrup. A killer treat to wake up to.
This joint may be called a crêperie, but that's hardly all they serve. The "ocean" salad ($9.99) includes a bunch of basic greens and tomatoes, plus toast wedges, a serving of smoked salmon and a big scoop of soft crème fraîche. The "Key West" sandwich ($8.79) puts prosciutto, provolone and tomatoes inside a nicely crunchy baguette. I'm not nuts about the portion sizes in the sandwiches and salads, but they feature simple, straightforward flavors, and I enjoy this place's tart, mustardy salad dressing.
Outside, Bridge Street is still quiet, but it's coming to life a bit. Over on the other side of the island, tourists in bathing suits are lugging beach chairs down to the water or sipping Daiquiris. Not exactly Montmartre, but the Island Creperie fits in just fine.
