Every shade of crepe offered at Pastel
[attach]4823[/attach]What happened when the hot dog met the crepe?
The Frankfurter, which comes complete with cheese, egg, spinach, mayonnaise, mustard and ketchup, was born.
“I never thought of having a crepe just like a hot dog, but we actually tried it and it really matches and it’s really tasty, so we put it on the menu,” says Jenny To, who created the dish along with her brother Johnny.
Pastel, their creperie and dessert house near Yonge Street and Finch Avenue, offers an assortment of cakes, waffles and savoury and sweet crepe concoctions that some of their customers have already over-indulged in.
“I remember this one guy who asked me ‘Does anyone ever break the record of eating like two or three crepes at once?’ ” she says. “So I was like ‘No’ and then he kept ordering, he actually tried almost all our crepes.
“It was so funny.”
“Two people tried like five or six,” adds Johnny.
Before joining forces to launch their business earlier this year, Jenny and Johnny were working in very different fields. Johnny says he spent five years in Hong Kong, where they were born, as an engineer while Jenny worked at a local Chinese TV station.
“My family, friends and girlfriend, everyone was here,” says Johnny. “So I came back here and started the business with my sister.”
Jenny says she came up with the idea because she loved crepes and was tired of having to travel out of her area to enjoy them.
“After my brother came back we kind of discussed why don’t we start a business,” she says. “I always had to go downtown to get crepes, so I thought why not open a creperie in North York?”
They chose the name Pastel not only for its literal definition, but also after a restaurant with its namesake in Tokyo, which they say had really good food and an atmosphere they wanted to embody.
Since they were new to making crepes, the siblings say they spent a lot of time researching and testing recipes until they found what they believed to be the best one.
“The crepes that we do, it is a little bit French-Japanese fusion,” she says. “We used to travel to Japan every single year for vacation for a week or so and we always loved the crepes there.
“They are so creative, so pretty, so we kind of want to bring that here.”
