Crepe Endo (or Kure-pu Endou as in the original Japanese) is a well-known crepe chain from Japan that had a pop up in Singapore in July. I tried some crepe flavours that were more novel.
Pistachio in desserts is a trend, and they had a Pistachio and Cream version for their fresh cream crepes. I also tried Zunda Butter, which is an edamame paste paired with savoury butter. I seldom see zunda offerings, especially not outside of Japan, and haven't seen it paired with butter in crepe before, so it was a must-try for me. They also had Zunda Kaya Butter (see Crepe Endo's menu in the image below), which seems to be unique to Singapore, but I didn't want to get the zunda buried under the sweet kaya, so I decided not to get that.
Pistachio and Cream Crepe
This crepe was done in the soft crepe style, which was lovely. With the fresh cream, it was a typical "fuwa fuwa" Japanese dessert, which means soft and fluffy. Although there was no "butter" in its official name, the crepe seemed to have rather strong butter notes, which I loved.
Whether because they added butter or not, the crepe itself was very savoury and nice. The salt felt more prominent than the sugar, which I think is important to balance out the sweet notes in desserts. So this instantly became one of my favourite crepes, beating many local French dessert crepes (such as French Fold or Entre-Nous Creperie), which seemed to use less salt in their dessert crepe batter.
The filling was also awesome. As you can see, the cream is a mix between the pistachio cream (green) and fresh cream, so overall it is a fluffy cream with green and white patches. The pistachio flavour was well balanced with salt, and the taste was more on the fragrant pandan-vanilla side, as opposed to nutty.
While the ground pistachio topping wasn't not well-toasted hence not crunchy, they further enhanced the toppings with bits of salted hard mini pretzel snack, which provided the satisfying crunch, extra pops of salt and hearty malty notes.
This was my favourite of the 2 flavours.
Zunda Butter Crepe
This crepe was done in a completely different style - toasted, very browned and crispy.
It smelled even a bit burned actually, especially when they first served it. (See the image for how some parts of it are a dark brown, closer to the sleeve. And actually the other side of the crepe was an even darker brown.) At first, I didn't like it, compared to the soft and fluffy pistachio version. However, considering that zunda is a very traditional Japanese topping, I think the overall concept was to mimic the traditional Japanese toasted senbei snacks, like Kyoto's yatsuhashi. Or think of well-griddled taiyaki or obanyaki that are slightly burned and served with traditional fillings, and this slightly-burned crispy crepe with zunda spread immediately makes sense.
The zunda paste had a very nice grassy fragrance and a full beany body, like freshly steamed fragrant edamame. It wasn't too sweet, and I thought it was slightly more savoury, like the salted edamame at served at izakayas or sushi joints, but perhaps the salt could have come from the butter.
The complaint I have is that there was barely enough zunda spread to fill the crepe, in sharp contrast to the pistachio cream which was overflowing and almost spilling out if you don't hold it properly. This zunda spread was just a sliver here and there, and it was even difficult to capture in photos. Some parts of the crepe did not even have a clear layer of zunda spread.
I also didn't notice much butter. After having a few bites of this, I went back to try the pistachio crepe again, and the butter flavour from that pistachio crepe was so much stronger and more prominent.
The lack of enough zunda spread and butter, together with the slightly burned and toasted-dry crepe style, made it rather dry in texture and not very pleasant. Furthermore, although the zunda spread was fragrant, its scarcity made it such that there wasn't much filling to flavour the batter with. This is in sharp contrast with adzuki sweets like taiyaki or obanyaki where they give you a very satisfying dollop of red bean filling.
So if you want to try the zunda flavour, perhaps you should go for the fresh cream version instead (the first item on the menu below).
Crepe Endo Menu
As mentioned, this is the menu of the Crepe Endo Singapore pop-up. (Click image to enlarge.)
Umacha Menu
The pop-up was in collaboration with Umacha, which sold the drinks meant to accompany the crepes. I didn't see anything I wanted to try, so I didn't get it, but here's the menu in case you're interested.
Overall, I still think Crepe Endo's offerings are lovely, and I hope they eventually set up a permanent presence in Singapore. I'll be trying more of their fresh cream crepes then, especially the zunda one.
Discover other pistachio treats
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