At La Crêperie Pierre Grise, Julien and Alison know what their “regulars” – including the odd celebrity – will order the moment they walk in the door.

“The Florentine and an Americano,” smiles Alison of the favoured crêpe of singer Hozier: a delightful concoction of creamed spinach, smoked bacon, French goats’ cheese and egg in a buckwheat galette.

Though Irish Country Living succumbs to the rebloche when we visit the blue-shuttered crêperie down on Greystones’ harbour on a drizzly morning and find ourselves almost transported to France as we step through its sunshine yellow door.

From the bottles of Normandy cider and bags of farine de sarrasin buckwheat flour on the shelves to the tables named after French cities – we’re at Nantes – with handwritten vintage postcards peeking out from under their glass tops, inviting you to test your Leaving Cert French.

And creating a little corner of France in Co Wicklow is exactly what Alison Reilly and Julien Lefebvre had in mind when they opened La Crêperie Pierre Grise (which translates as Greystones) in 2015.

A Lille romance

The couple, who married last June, met in Dublin almost 10 years ago when Julien, a chef, moved to Ireland from Lille to improve his English.

“I didn’t think anything would become of the tall, handsome French man,” laughs Alison, who is originally from Greystones. “But it did!”

The pair conducted a long-distance romance for a spell after Alison moved to Thailand to teach English, before relocating together to Annecy in the south east of France.

It was there that they both fell in love with a local crêperie, Ti Mad, and wondered if something similar would work in Ireland: especially as Julien had specifically trained as a crêpe chef, which is treated as a category all of its own in French restaurants, such is the skill required.

After waiting a long time for the right premises, a former bookies down by the marina came up for lease. Sensing its potential, Alison and Julien used their savings as well as a bank loan and funding from Microfinance Ireland to turn their dream into reality, opening the August bank holiday weekend of 2015.

“We underestimated the demand and we ran out of flour and pastry (crêpe batter) by two o’clock,” recalls Alison. “At the time, I thought it was a disaster that we were running out; but in hindsight, it was a really good sign.”

French fancies

While the crêperie does cater for takeaway orders, it is more of a French-style, sit-down family restaurant. And who really would want to rush one of Julien’s savoury galettes, made with buckwheat flour suitable for those with a gluten intolerance, and incorporating the best of French and Irish ingredients.

Options including the Compléte (bacon or ham, French Emmental cheese and egg), La Irlandaise (Irish sausages, French emmental cheese, egg, mustard l’ancienne and crème fraiche), the Nordique (organic smoked Irish salmon, zesty lemon, crème fraiche and dill) and the Saboyarde (French smoked ham and white ham and raclette cheese and potatoes served with a side of pickles).

“The cheesy ones are the most popular – and the potatoes in Ireland!” smiles Julien, who cooks his crêpes on a traditional pan called a billig, on which the temperature reaches 230°C.

Sweet treats

Then of course there are the sweet treats, from the simplest crêpe with lemon, butter and sugar right up to the Mont Blanc (white chocolate ice cream with fine chocolate shavings that melt on the tongue, white hot chocolate sauce and whipped cream) or Coco Chanel (Swiss chocolate and coconut ice cream enhanced with delicate coconut pieces, homemade hot chocolate sauce, coconut shavings and whipped cream).

Julien spent a year perfecting his recipes for his homemade salted caramel, chocolate and white chocolate sauces, while he also uses a traditional brown sugar called vergeoise, which his mother had in their kitchen to make crêpes when he was a boy.

“There was no Nutella!” he laughs. “It’s a caramelised sugar and you only find that in the north of France and I’m probably sure that we are the only one in Ireland using that sugar.”

La Crêperie Pierre Grise is currently open from Wednesday to Sunday from 10am to 6pm, but will be open till 9pm again at weekends, come spring. However, they will be open on Pancake Tuesday to serve their sweet and savoury crêpes, as well as selling stacks of plain crêpes for people to take away.

Though for those of us whipping up pancakes in our own kitchens, Julien recommends letting the batter rest for at least an hour – or even better, overnight – in the fridge to produce a much better consistency and therefore softer, lighter crêpes.

And after that, all there is to say is: bon appétit!

find out more

La Crêperie Pierre Grise, The Harbour, Greystones, Co Wicklow. Call (01) 287 8352 or visit www.lacreperie.ie