Your café-cum-bar, Avila Crepes, is nestled into a sweet Bondi backstreet. How did you find the site? I moved to a new house in Bondi and I found a fish tank in the middle of the street. A sign said 'Take me', so I did. I took it home and then thought, "Okay, where can I buy some fish?" Down the road was this aquarium shop and the place was falling apart. It was in the most terrible condition you can possibly imagine, but honestly, when I first walked in I thought, “There's a great opportunity here”. So you bought the aquarium? At the time, I was looking to lease a space for a café, so when my real estate suggested a Bondi store that was for sale, I immediately I thought, "No way am I going to buy a place!” I gave it a look anyway and it ended up being the aquarium I'd visited a month before! I got quite excited. I thought it was a destiny kind of thing.
A cocktail-serving crêperie is an unlikely combination, particularly when coming from a Venezuelan. What inspired the concept? I was working with French staff in the office [Alejandro owns Sydney’s Black and White Waiters]. She said, "You should do crêpes." I was like, "Yes! Exactly!" Why? Because it's unique. There are so many places in Bondi; you've got Thai, Indian, organic, greasy. We had to have a strong point of differentiation and do it really well. No one was doing crêpes and, as far as I know, everyone likes crêpes, so I decided to make a crêperie that specialises in cocktails.
You called upon a couple of French nationals to keep the menu authentic… Yes, I asked a French chef called Raphael Matet to design the menu. He's a two-hatted chef who has been living in Australia for 15 years, so even though he's French and very experienced, he understands the Australian market. However, he's not a crêpier. That's when we got a Brittany-born chef, Camile Dubois, on board. He's been making crêpes all his life in France, and he's the one who actually executes that menu.
And as for your ingredients, I believe you import your buckwheat flour from France? We're the only people in Australia importing the most famous buckwheat flour from Brittany. It's a bit pricey, but it makes a big difference. It's exactly the same flour they use in the region crêpes originated.
So what constitutes a good crêpe? For a lot of Australians, as soon as they think about crêpes, they think about Nutella. Yes, Nutella crêpes are incredible, but we need to talk about galettes – the savoury ones! Galettes come with a gluten-free (buckwheat) base and the toppings might be goat's cheese, ocean trout, Spanish chorizo or prosciutto. They’re light, easy to eat, and a proper meal for breakfast, lunch or dinner.
What’s your favourite cocktail and crêpe combination? At the moment we’re making ‘the marquis’. It’s got calvados and vermouth and actually comes with cinnamon apple on the side, so it goes really with the apple cinnamon crêpe.
Cook the crêpe
Source: Avila Crepes
