A couple of years ago, we were serving crepes at a private party (an anniversary, as I recall) in north London when someone once asked why all the crepes we made were circular. That question threw us a bit. We’ve made literally hundreds of thousands of crepes over the many years we have been catering at weddings and parties, yet nobody had ever asked us that question before. The lady who asked the question was duly rewarded with extra nutella!
So why are crêpes circular? In fact, why are pancakes across the World invariably round? Well, the obvious (and therefore probably correct) answer is that they start life as a liquid. So whichever container or surface they are prepared on, they are going to be affected by gravity (and probably all kinds of other forces – physics was never my strong point, thankfully). So with that in mind your crepe or pancake will naturally want to form a circle. It just sort of happens.
Of course, wherever you are making crepes, be it at a party or wedding, you aren’t just going to rely on gravity (or centrifugal forces or whatever it is all about) to do your work for you. As a crepe chef, you can influence the liquid with your specially designed tool and the easiest shape to form is a circle.
And that detailed explanation, pretty much word-for-word, is what we told the lady in north London, while she stood and ate her nutella drenched pancake at our mobile stand.
But this got us to thinking: why not innovate and develop the “non-round” crepe? Well the first answer is that our circular ones are quite good enough as they are. We’ve spent over ten years perfecting them and we are very proud of them. So: why re-invent the wheel? Or in this case: why re-invent the circular pancake?
Strictly speaking, there is nothing stopping us designing and developing some kind of mould, whereby the crepe mixture can be poured in resulting in a square pancake. Or perhaps triangular. Or maybe even wedding dress shaped – which of course would be a very appropriate variation for a wedding.
But at the end of the day, the taste is probably the most important factor to consider. And on that criteria, we are very satisfied. And we would like to think that thousands of party and wedding guests would agree with us.
So we say: long live the circular crepe!
