Veronique King dances slowly in a circle to a French pop song playing on the radio in her shop, Crêpes Véronique. A sugary smell wafts through the small café after the lunchtime rush.
“I’m not just dancing, you know,” King says, in a thick French accent. She wears steel-framed glasses, a hat to keep her hair back as she cooks and an apron dotted with the flour she uses in her crepe batter.
“I do this to relax my neck, after a long day of making crepes.”
Since Crêpes Véronique opened last March, King has spent her afternoons cooking crepes for a steady flow of customers.
And despite the need to relax her neck at the end of the day, she loves sharing crepes — the thin pancakes considered a French national dish — with the people of Chapel Hill.
“The crepe is something very seductive, and like a pizza it’s something that’s difficult to live without,” King said. “It’s so convenient, comfortable and easy, and that’s what I like about the crepe.”
King has three employees who work at the cash register and tend to customers while she prepares each order. She mixes the batter and pours it onto hot skillets, evening the mixture out until it’s thinly and uniformly spread.
Finally she adds cheese, ham or other ingredients the order calls for.
The menu is small but traditional, similar to an old-fashioned Parisian créperie. It offers savory crepes — filled with salty items such as cheese, eggs or mushrooms — and sweet crepes, which include ingredients such as chocolate, bananas, apples or caramel.
