Lulu's Creperie Cafe

Lulu's Creperie Cafe

24781 Alicia Pkwy Suite E

Laguna Hills, CA

From the outside it doesn't look like much, but once you walk in...

...It definitely has more of a "cafe" feel to it.  We learned about this place through Orange County's Restaurant Week that took place from Sept. 12th until Sept. 19th.  Restaurant Week is when restaurants from the region put out a special type of menu showcasing their food in a three- (or more) course meal for a discounted price. 

Lulu's Creperie Cafe is a small, French-styled restaurant that serves sandwiches, pastries, and of course, crepes.  On to the food....

They served sliced French baguettes and what tasted like cinnamon-pumpkin muffins as soon as we sat down.  The bread was soft on the inside and crunchy on the outside. YuM! The muffin was also yummie, it was moist and soft on the inside and a tad crispy on the top.

 We ordered two different sets of meals. My first course was Soup de Jour, "Soup of the day", which was some type of squash soup. The texture of the soup was fluffy and creamy, the taste was sweet and hearty, full of flavors. It is a little bit sweet but tasted great when I dipped the French baguettes in.

My first course was a salad.  Typical, nothing special, but it seemed fresh at least.  Although it wasn't anything to die for, I think I preferred it versus the soup.  The soup was a little too hearty and I think just a taste of it was enough.

Since we were in a French style cafe, I figured I'd give the French Dip a try. The bread used in the sandwich was the same baguette that was served to us when we were first seated. The main difference is that there was Au Jus sauce that came with this one.  The hot Au Jus sauce was pretty flavorful.  The meat was rather tender and when you dip the sandwich in the Au Jus ~*it was a match in heaven*~ I let the sandwich soak in the sauce so that both the meat and the bread could absorb the flavor of the sauce.  Even after soaking the bread in the Au Jus, the flaky layer of the baguette still remained crunchy, which I enjoyed quite a bit with the extra Au Jus flavoring.  The french fries were crispy, and tasted great with a mixture of ketchup, tabasco and pepper.

My main dish was the chicken crepe with mushroom cream sauce.  It was also a hearty dish, though I did enjoy eating most of it.  The flavors of the cream sauce mixed with the sun-dried tomatoes and the mushrooms was a good combination, but I would have wanted more tomatoes to really make the flavor tastier.  The texture of the cream sauce and the crepe together made it all taste somewhat mushy, though I could tell the crepe was (at some point) almost like chewy pancake.

For the third course, I had pumpkin ice cream.  The pumpkin ice cream had hints of cinnamon and it was kinda icy, like it had very, very smally ice. The ice cream itself tasted okay, but when combined with the apple tart it was a different story.

My dessert was a petite apple tart, though I'd say it was more a mini apple pie.  The tartness of the apple was just right though the crust was a little too soft for my liking.  At first I thought the whipped cream was ice cream and (to my disappointment) it wasn't.  So I stole some of David's pumpkin ice cream to top it off.  I think I just made their tart 5x better!  I think it should be served warm and with a little ice cream a la carte.  It brings out the spices better too.

The amazing part of this visit was the price of everything! For the 3 course meal it was $10 dollar per person! However this was only because of the restaurant week thing, otherwise it would probably cost $15-20 per person for the things we ordered.

Service was... eh.  At one point the manager actually asked us to move a whole table when we were at the end of our meal.  Having worked at a small restaurant before, I can understand that when people need seats, you gotta make the room, but I'm not sure if it was the right decision in this case.

Overall rating (out of 5 stars):

Food-  3.5

Service- 2.5

Environment- 4

Price- 3.5

Epi-what?  Epi-hearty.