Sweet or Savory: What to Order at a Creperie in St. Louis
Revised September 16, 2026
How are crepes supposed to be eaten?
Warm, fresh off the griddle, and in order: savory first, then sweet. A crepe is a thin wheat-flour pancake folded or rolled around a filling, so it works as a wrapper, not a stack. When it’s plated, use a knife and fork. In a paper cone, eat it from the top down while it’s hot.
Keep reading ↓The line in Maplewood is six deep on a Saturday and nobody seems to mind, because everybody’s watching the same thing. A woman behind the counter pours a ladle of batter onto a round black griddle, drags a little wooden rake through it in one smooth circle, and it’s suddenly a paper-thin disc the size of a hubcap. Thirty seconds. Flip. Ham, an egg cracked right on top, a fistful of cheese. She folds the edges in like she’s wrapping a gift and slides it onto a plate. The guy who ordered it looks a little scared of it.
That’s the moment most people freeze. The menu has a savory side and a sweet side, half the words are French, and one of them is “galette,” which sounds like a cookie. You don’t know if you eat this thing with your hands or a fork, whether it counts as a meal or a snack, or why the woman at the next table is having lunch and dessert off the same plate.
This post is the cheat sheet. What a crepe actually is, how it’s meant to be eaten, what to order the first time you walk into a creperie in St. Louis, and how to tell a place that makes them properly from one that reheats a stack. No business names, no prices. Just what I’d tell my own family before they went.
How are crepes supposed to be eaten?
Warm, fresh off the griddle, and in order: savory first, then sweet. A crepe is a thin wheat-flour pancake folded or rolled around a filling, so it works as a wrapper, not a stack. When it’s plated, use a knife and fork. In a paper cone, eat it from the top down while it’s hot. Cold crepes are a leftover, not a plan.
That order isn’t fussy. It’s just how the people who invented them eat. In Brittany, the region of northwest France where crepes come from, a meal at a creperie runs savory course, then sweet course, usually with a bowl of dry cider on the side. The savory one fills you up. The sweet one is small and sharp and finishes the thing. You can absolutely order just one. But if you want to know what the fuss is about, order both, in that order.
The fold tells you what you’re holding, too. Savory crepes get folded into a square or a loose envelope with the filling peeking out. Sweet crepes get folded into triangles, or rolled like a cigar, or laid flat with the sauce on top. Either way the crepe is the vehicle. Treat it like a tortilla with better manners.
What’s the difference between a crepe and a galette?
Flour, mostly. A galette is made with buckwheat flour, which is darker, nuttier, and a bit earthy, and it has no sugar in it. A crepe is made with white wheat flour, a little sugar, and comes out pale and soft. Galettes are savory by tradition. Crepes lean sweet. That’s the whole split, and every creperie in St. Louis sits somewhere on it.
The classic galette is the “complete”: ham, a fried egg, and grated cheese, folded into a square with the yolk showing through the window in the middle. You break the yolk with your fork and let it run into the buckwheat. Buckwheat crisps at the edges the way wheat flour doesn’t, so a good galette has lacy, slightly crunchy corners and a soft center. It’s a serious plate of food. People who think crepes are dainty have not met one.
Here’s the wrinkle. Plenty of places, including some in Clayton and Webster Groves, use wheat batter for everything and call the savory ones crepes anyway. That’s fine. It’s a softer, milder bite. But if you see the word galette or buckwheat on a menu, that’s a place taking the tradition seriously, and the savory side is where you should start.
Why a crepe isn’t a pancake
No leavening. A pancake gets baking powder or baking soda, so it puffs up and holds air, and you stack three of them and drown them in syrup. A crepe gets flour, eggs, milk, butter, a pinch of salt, and nothing to make it rise. The batter is thin as cream. It spreads across the griddle and sets in seconds, flexible enough to fold four times without cracking. One is a stack. The other is a wrapper. If a stack is what you actually want, the breakfast and brunch guide covers where that lives.
What should you order first at a creperie?
A ham, egg, and cheese savory, then a butter-and-sugar or lemon-and-sugar sweet. That’s the honest answer. Both are simple, both are the ones the kitchen makes a hundred times a day, and both show you exactly how good the crepe itself is with nothing to hide behind. Save the loaded dessert crepe with four toppings and a scoop of ice cream for your second visit.
There’s a reason for the plain-first rule. A crepe that’s been made well has a faint sweetness, a buttery edge, and enough tenderness that you barely have to chew. Under a pile of chocolate-hazelnut spread, bananas, and whipped cream, you can’t tell if the crepe is good or if it’s a damp napkin. Lemon and sugar hides nothing. If that one is great, everything on the menu probably is.
Ordering for a table is easier than it looks. Share. One savory per two people, cut down the middle, then one sweet the same way. You’ll taste twice as much and nobody leaves feeling like they ate a blanket. Kids almost always want the chocolate one, and that’s fine. It’s a pancake in a trench coat. Let them have it.
The sweet classics, from simplest to showiest
- Butter and sugar. The original. Warm butter, granulated sugar, folded in a triangle. Nothing else.
- Lemon and sugar. Same thing with a squeeze of lemon. Sharp, bright, gone in four bites.
- Chocolate-hazelnut spread. The crowd favorite, and the one most likely to be ordered by someone under ten.
- Fruit and cream. Strawberries or bananas with whipped cream. Good when the fruit is actually ripe, sad when it isn’t.
- The flambeed orange-butter crepe. Butter, sugar, orange, and a splash of liqueur set on fire tableside. Old-school, a little dramatic, and worth it once.
What goes with a savory crepe
A simple green salad with a sharp vinaigrette, and that’s about it. The crepe is rich, so the salad cuts it. In Brittany the traditional drink is dry cider served in a ceramic bowl, and a few St. Louis places nod to that. Coffee works. A big soda does not. If the spot also does pastry, a good sign is when the bread case looks like it belongs in the bakery guide; a kitchen that respects dough usually respects batter.
Sweet or savory: how do you decide?
Ask yourself one question: is this a meal or a treat? If you skipped lunch, you want savory, because a galette with ham and egg is a full plate and a sweet crepe is not. If you’re there at three in the afternoon with a coffee, you want sweet. If you can’t decide, that’s the answer too. Order both, smaller, and eat them in order.
Time of day matters more than people think. Morning crowds in Chesterfield lean sweet, because a crepe feels like breakfast. Lunch crowds go savory. After dinner it’s all sugar and flames. None of that is a rule, but it tells you what the kitchen has warmed up and ready. Order with the room and your food usually comes out faster and better.
Size matters too. Some counters make crepes the width of a dinner plate. Others make them palm-sized and expect you to order three. Look at what’s going out to other tables before you commit. In my experience, the size of the griddle tells you the size of the crepe.
How do you eat a crepe without wearing it?
Plated: knife and fork, start at a folded corner, and work toward the middle where the filling is thickest. Cone: hold the paper, not the crepe, and eat from the top down, tilting it a little so the filling settles instead of escaping out the bottom. That’s the whole technique. It’s a burrito with a French accent.
With a galette, break the egg yolk first and let it run. Then cut wedges from the outside in, so every bite gets some crispy edge and some soft middle. Don’t try to lift the whole thing. It’s bigger than it looks and the yolk goes everywhere. The corners are the best part anyway, and you want them while they’re still crisp.
Sweet crepes in a triangle are easy. Cut from the point, which is thin and crisp, and save the fat folded end for last, because that’s where the butter and sugar pooled. If it comes rolled with sauce on top, cut it into rounds like a jelly roll. And when the flambeed one arrives, wait for the flame to die. The person next to you may laugh. Let them.
The street-style cone
Some counters hand you a sweet crepe folded into a quarter and wrapped in paper. No plate, no fork. Peel the paper down as you go, never all at once, and keep it upright. The chocolate-hazelnut ones drip. Napkins are not optional. If you’re walking down the sidewalk in Maplewood eating one, that’s exactly how it’s done on the street in France, so you’re fine.
What separates a good creperie from a sad one?
Batter made in-house, rested for at least an hour, poured to order on a round griddle, and spread with a wooden rake until it’s thin enough to see the griddle through it. That’s the whole recipe for a good crepe. A sad creperie skips one or more of those steps, and you can taste every one it skipped.
Rested batter matters more than any other single thing. Fresh-mixed batter has gluten that’s still tight, and it makes a crepe that’s rubbery and chews like a rubber band. Let the batter sit and the flour relaxes, the bubbles go away, and the crepe comes out tender. Thick batter is the other killer. It makes a heavy, bready crepe that tastes like a flat pancake and folds like cardboard.
Then there’s the reheated stack. Some places make fifty crepes in the morning, pile them under plastic, and warm one up with the filling when you order. Those crepes are limp, a little gummy, and the filling is often hotter than the wrapper. A made-to-order crepe has lacy, slightly browned edges and it’s hot everywhere at once. Wet fillings do damage too. Too much sauce, or fruit that’s been sitting in its own juice, and the crepe goes soggy on the plate before you get your fork in.
How to size up a creperie before you order
Treat it like hiring anybody. Shortlist two or three places, walk in, and ask the counter what they make in-house. You want to hear that the batter is theirs, that it rests, and that they pour to order. Tell them what you expect, which is a thin, tender crepe with warm filling and crisp edges. Then compare that against what they say they’re set up to deliver. The gap between the two is the signal. A place that says “we make everything here, come watch” is a different place from one that shrugs.
Watch the griddle for thirty seconds. Is it round and flat, or is it a square flat-top shared with the burgers? Is somebody using a wooden spreader, or a squeeze bottle and a spatula? Are the edges of the crepes going out lacy, or are they pale and thick? Are the fillings sitting in a cold well or getting warmed as the crepe cooks? You can answer every one of those from the line without asking a single question. It’s the same instinct the bagel guide uses for a bagel shop: watch whether they boil.
Can you just make them at home?
Yes, and you should try it once, because it makes you appreciate the counter. The batter is embarrassingly easy: flour, eggs, milk, melted butter, salt, whisked smooth and left in the fridge for an hour. The first crepe always fails. Always. Too much batter, wrong heat, it tears. That’s the pan seasoning itself, and everybody who’s ever made crepes knows the first one belongs to the cook. The flip is the skill. It takes a dozen tries and a thin spatula. Once you get it, you’ll wonder why you ever paid for them, and then you’ll go back to the creperie anyway because theirs are better.
Run the creperie? Find out what AI tells hungry diners about you.
Want something cold to finish the night? See what to know about frozen yogurt around St. Louis.
Ready to pick a place? Browse creperies across the St. Louis metro on St Louis Near Me Directory, then order one savory and one sweet and split them.
If you run a business in this line of work, list your business.
Frequently asked questions
Is a crepe basically a pancake?
Close cousins, not the same thing. Both start with flour, eggs, and milk, but a pancake has baking powder so it rises and gets fluffy, and a crepe has none, so it stays paper-thin and flexible. A pancake is something you stack. A crepe is something you wrap around a filling. That one difference changes how you cook it, fold it, and eat it.
What is the savory version of crepes called?
A galette, or sometimes a galette de sarrasin, which just means buckwheat galette. It comes from Brittany in northwest France, uses buckwheat flour instead of wheat, has no sugar, and gets folded into a square around fillings like ham, egg, and cheese. Many St. Louis creperies still call it a savory crepe on the menu. Same idea, different flour.
What do you serve with savory crepes?
Not much, and that’s the point. A simple green salad with a sharp vinaigrette cuts the richness of the egg and cheese. In Brittany the traditional drink is dry cider in a bowl. A cup of coffee or a glass of something dry works too. Skip heavy sides. The crepe is the meal, and a pile of fries next to it just makes everything soggy.
Do you eat crepes warm or cold?
Warm, always, and ideally within a minute or two of leaving the griddle. That’s when the edges are crisp and the center is tender. A crepe that sits gets limp and a little gummy, and a cold one is chewy. If you take one home, reheat it dry in a hot skillet for twenty seconds a side rather than the microwave, which steams it.
What do crepes taste like?
A plain wheat crepe tastes faintly sweet and buttery, with a soft eggy tenderness and a hint of browning at the edges, a bit like the thin crispy rim of a pancake without the fluff. A buckwheat galette is darker, nuttier, and slightly earthy, with crispier corners. Both are mild on purpose. The filling does the talking, and the crepe carries it.
Are crepes healthier than pancakes?
A plain crepe is thinner and lighter than a stack of pancakes, with less flour and no leavening, so on its own it’s the lighter choice. The filling decides the rest. A ham-and-egg galette with a salad is a reasonable lunch. A crepe buried in chocolate-hazelnut spread and whipped cream is dessert, and no amount of thinness changes that. Order by what’s inside.
Are crepes harder than pancakes?
The batter is easier, the cooking is harder. Pancake batter forgives lumps and thick pours. Crepe batter has to be thin, rested, and poured in one quick swirl before it sets, and the first one always tears. The flip is the real skill and takes practice with a thin spatula. That’s exactly why a creperie is worth paying for. They’ve done the thousand practice ones.
How many crepes should you order per person?
One savory per person if you’re hungry, or one savory shared between two plus one sweet shared, if you want to taste more. Sizes vary a lot between counters, from dinner-plate galettes to palm-sized street crepes, so glance at what’s going out to other tables first. In my experience, two people splitting one savory and one sweet leave happy and not stuffed.
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