Breakfast at Café Crespin - Buenos Aires

Café Crespin won’t win any awards for restaurant design or décor but it has a USA-centric menu featuring lots of menu items that, although appearing in higher frequency on menus in Buenos Aires these days, are still a rarity. The restaurant is highly regarded by local critics and consumers. We were looking for more content for our “Eat like a Gringo” feature and this little café and Café Malvón, a couple of blocks away, both have pancakes and French toast on the menu, which are among the “gringo” foods we’re featuring. Would these items be worth recommending?

On my first visit, the service, although somewhat “ho-hum”, was adequate, and the waitress was friendly. I ordered the French Toast which is more accurately described as a big plate of scrambled eggs and bacon with a couple of big slices of French toast, dusted with confectioner’s sugar, on the side. It was a feast that just happened to have French toast on the plate. The eggs were cooked perfectly, unlike the overcooked scrambled eggs we had a few days earlier at Biblos. The bacon was actually “bacon”, not the ham imposter they like to pass off as bacon in this city, and it was cooked until slightly crisp. Just right.

The French toast was a pillowy-soft eggy brioche, perfectly caramelized. It was served with a funky bottle of Café Crespin corn syrup on the side. The syrup was sweet and not much else. Next time I’ll ask for a bit of butter and honey on the side. Truth is, the toast, dusted with powdered sugar, was sufficiently sweet without the syrup. This was a commendable version of the French (or is it Roman?) classic. My first visit was quite enjoyable.

Second visit? Not so good. I returned on a Saturday morning when the café was full.

I ordered the “hot cakes” on the second visit. It was two medium-size pancakes, hollowed out on top, with a bit of overly-sweet raspberry preserves on top and a small plastic ramekin of dulce de leche on the side. The hotcakes were not appropriately named since they weren’t “hot”. They were also undercooked, bordering on raw, and were spongy. What little bit of caramelized surface there was on the pancake, had been removed on top to provide a place for the raspberry preserves, adding insult to injury. This was a bad recipe, poorly executed. This dish was a total miss. And what did the two pancakes cost with the included coffee and juice cost? A whopping US$9.

The service was slower than slow. It took a good twenty minutes to be acknowledged and receive a menu once I sat down. I ordered the check and she forgot to bring it. I eventually had to get up and walk to the register. The girls were doing their best. But with a full house and what is apparently zero system or organization in this restaurant, the service was a disaster.

Bottom line. Go for the French toast on a weekday. Skip the place on weekends and don’t order the cold “hot cakes”.