Attorney Chris McNally paused with his briefcase on the sidewalk while he savored a chocolate-and-orange crepe still warm from the cart parked in front of the City-County Building.
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Julia Price at her crepe cart in front of the City-County Building on Grant Street: "It's my concept of fine fast food." (Robin Rombach, Post-Gazette) |
"It's a little bit of Paris on La Rue Grant," he quipped, before hurrying off to court.
He was the first customer on a recent morning and already is a regular at Gourmet Crepes, which for about a month now has set up mobile shop on the corner of Grant Street and Fourth Avenue, Downtown. It's open from about 10:30 a.m. to 3 p.m., and attracts lines of customers at lunch-hour peaks. The purple-trimmed stainless steel trailer, decorated with purple fabric, also draws a lot of attention from passers-by, who say things ranging from "Ooooh, that smells sooo good!" to "What's a gore-met crap?"
"Creepy," "craypee" -- proprietor Julia Price and her mother/helper, Judy Price, have heard various mispronunciations for the foodstuff the French call krep: a delicately thin flour pancake.
Julia knows crepes, though she looks more like a model. That's because she worked as a model in Paris from 1989 to 1997. She fell in love with French food.
She fills her crepes with so many different goodies that it's hard for some customers to choose.
"Are you hungry for something sweet or hungry for something savory?" Judy asks the guy in the prothonotary's office shirt, Cameron Hairston, who says he's never eaten a crepe.
The hand-written menu board lists, for sweet crepes, sugar with orange butter ($2); chocolate with chantilly ($3, and if you don't know that chantilly is whipped cream, you're not the only one); chocolate with coconut ($3); fresh strawberries in strawberry coulis, or puree, with chantilly ($4); and sour cream, brown sugar and cinnamon ($3).
The savory (French for "not sweet") list includes ham and Cheddar cheese ($3); buffalo mozzarella, tomato and basil olive oil ($5); and chicken, bacon, Cheddar and tomatoes with mustard sauce ($5).
Then there is the "crepe du jour," which last Thursday was not just chocolate with orange sauce ($3), but also peaches and cream ($4).
"We change it, just because I think it's fun to try new things," says Julia, who's experimenting with baking so she can add baguette sandwiches to the cart.
(On her pay days in Paris, her mother says, "She'd go get baguettes and crepes. She'd run.")
Julia has to hustle to run this custom-made cart, sometimes staying up all night at her Brighton Heights home to prepare the flour-egg-and-milk batter and other ingredients, all from scratch. On site, she's frequently juggling several crepes at once, but takes the time for special touches such as freshly ground pepper.
As Hairston told her, "You must be a professor of crepe-ology over here."
Her "real" job is working as a Continental flight attendant, making once-a-week flights between her base in Newark, N.J., and Paris.
The wooden T-shaped bar that she uses to paint the thin batter on the propane-heated round griddles and the unusual wooden spatula she uses to flip and fold them -- these she brought from France.
She cranks out crepes -- up to 200 a day. Meanwhile, her mother -- she lives in Steubenville, Ohio -- takes customers' orders and hands them their crepes in foam clamshell containers (Pittsburghers didn't take to eating them out of paper the way the Parisians do.) Judy also serves from an Igloo cooler cups of delicious Doc's homemade lemon-and-orangeade, made by her husband, Dr. Robert "Doc" Price, just as he has since Julia was a child. Julia has even been helped by her 7-year-old daughter, Camille.
This friendly family feel must be part of why Julia says the cart has "gotten a really good response."
But her blue eyes and chantilly smile haven't hurt. Word is, one Post-Gazette government reporter has a crush on her. This from another PG government reporter who's a little sweet on her, too.
Julia likes the cops who show her their badges, the occasional sightings of Mayor Tom Murphy and other civic celebrities, the Friday Farmers' Market, where she's bought herbs, and the general hustle and bustle on this busy corner. It was the site she picked after winning several choices in the lottery the city held after City Council overhauled restrictive ordinances to allow more street vendors here.
Council, in accordance with new vending rules written by Councilman Jim Ferlo, approved 36 sites across the city back in December 2000, and established a base annual license fee for mobile vendors -- now $515. Vendors who sell from stationary vehicles, such as the famous food trucks at Carnegie Mellon University, or who set up near sports and entertainment sites pay $1,030. "Peddlers," who must carry all their wares on their person, pay $258.
City officials say the new regulations are a work in progress. Julia, who had briefly tried selling crepes in the Strip District, still had to cut through a lot of red tape. She opened on Grant for a short time last fall, but this is her first full season. "I feel like the first one in the city selling food outside."
Deputy Mayor Sal Sirabella, who stopped by the cart to say hello, calls Julia a "pioneer" and a "test case," and is delighted that she's leading the way to more street eating here.
There is only one other city-licensed street vendor of food Downtown, says Mary Fleming, acting assistant chief in the city Bureau of Building Inspections that administers vending licenses and permits. But she points out that 25 of the permanent street and sidewalk sites are now up for grabs, including 11 Downtown. Applications must be completed by 3:15 p.m. tomorrow. Full details are available at the Web site, www.city.pittsburgh.pa.us/BBI/.
The other new Downtown food vendor who's doing well in his first season is Aspinwall's Rhett Metz, who runs a hot dog cart at one of the locations he won in the city lottery -- on William Penn Place at Mellon Square. "It doesn't really have a name. It's just my hot dog stand," says Metz, a junior at Penn State University who didn't want to work for someone else this summer. He sells dogs for $2 -- or two with chips and a drink for $4 -- and is open from about 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. five days a week. He did close up a bit early last Thursday for a reason that street food fans will find easy to swallow.
He'd sold out.
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