Julian's Pâtisserie and Café (Folsom): Café Edition

food: 4.5/5
experience: 5/5
overall: 5/5

Crepes. They're the pancakes you can stuff full of good shit. Like chicken and turkey and fruit and well anything really. Julian's specializes in them and we came here enough times to try basically the entire menu, along with some of their other fantabulous (but not as fab as the crepes) offerings.

First, of course, I'm gonna tell you about these here crepes. We tried, well, a bunch in total. The crepes themselves are delicious little skinny pancakes. Incoming: a bunch of pictures of crepes.

First, the savory crepes.



The angry bird: 5/5
Chicken, avocado, mozzarella, and sriracha mayo. Savory, filling, and the mayo is a delightful twist. It's not too spicy for those with sensitive tastebuds. This is a great savory combo. It's like a chicken club but with sriracha mayo.


The buffalo chicken: 5/5
Buffalo sauce, chicken, ranch, cheese. A very cheesy combo, if you will. The buffalo sauce is just the right amount of spicy. Maybe a little too spicy for some who don't like it hot. I didn't really use the ranch because it already tasted super bomb but I did try it and, though yummy, it didn't make it any better because it was already a ten out of ten. So either way works.


The turkey pesto: 4.5/5
Turkey slices, pesto sauce (on top and in), cheese. Love that they put the pesto on and in. This is a pesto-full item right here. If you like pesto you like this crepe. It's like a turkey pesto sando in crepe form, pretty much. This is a good thing.


The salmon galette: 3.5/5
Smoked salmon and capers on top, dill cream cheese inside. Okay so this one is a little plain. The smoked salmon is great but the interior is just a thin layer of cream cheese with dill in it and that's it. For the price I'd skip this one.

On to the dessert crepes!


The caramel apple: 4/5
Apples with cinnamon brown sugar and caramel sauce. Apples on the out and in, a cinnamon brown sugar mix inside, and powdered sugar and caramel on top (got it on the side). It's a simple but sweet combo and it works. A light breakfast treat.


The lemon blueberry: 4/5
Lemon cream with blueberries in and on top plus powdered sugar as always. It's a nice light crepe, and lemons and blueberries complement each other well. The lemon cream tastes kind of like lemon pudding. There's not too much of it and there's a lot of blueberries, both good things.


The forest berry: 4/5
Three kinds of berries inside a cream filling with berries and powdered sugar on top. Another light crepe. The cream filling isn't too prominent. The main draw is the raspberries, blueberries, and blackberries, which are all delicious and make for a nice, healthy-tasting breakfast.


The banana brown sugar crepe: 5/5
Bananas, brown sugar, and cream filling with bananas on top. All the best oatmeal toppings crammed into one hot, gooey, sweet, delicious crepe. Definitely the star of the dessert crepe menu.

And their other offerings...


Breakfast burrito: 4/5
Only served until 11am, so get it while it's hot. It's wrapped in a whole wheat tortilla which is uh... very white of them. Anyway. It's decent. It's definitely egg-heavy. There's not a lot of flavor in there apart from its components - namely egg, avocado, breakfast potatoes, cheese, and bacon. So those things are indeed good, and this is indeed a nice meal, but it's by no means the best breakfast burrito you'll ever have. It's more like a breakfast wrap. Healthy, at least.

Similarly, they have wraps all day if you're looking for a burrito fix, made with that same wheat tortilla. Chicken pesto or veggies with hummus are your options.


Good news for the brunch crowd: quiche is served all day long! They have a couple varieties, the sun-dried tomato/basil/feta and the ham/Swiss. I got the one that sounded more appealing, the sun-dried tomato. Sun-dried tomato, basil, and feta are all yummy things and ham and Swiss are whatever.


Quiche: 5/5
Highly recommend going with this one if you're getting the quiche. There are so many different flavors going on here and they all work together perfectly. They even have melted mozzarella between the quiche and the crust. One of the best quiches I've had so far.

Their lunch entrees, which include sandwiches and salads. Their salads be too basic for me and I wanted to see how good their bread is so I got those.


Grilled chicken melt: 5/5
Chicken, bacon, tomato, mozzarella, pesto, boom. Flavor explosion. This is a very well-rounded, hearty, tasty sandwich and it's definitely my favorite one on the menu. Comes on a crusty French roll.


Croque monsieur: 4.5/5
Gotta love a cheese crust. This is like a fancy grilled cheese. It's got ham, dijon, and béchamel sauce in there too. On a pain de mie with a delicious layer of crispy cheese on top.

They have croissant-wiches too. See my patisserie review for how good their croissants are.


Mmmm. They melt the cheese on top. Croissant-wiches are the best. I would know; I eat at Jack-in-the-Box.

And their dessert entrees! Not to be confused with the ones in the case. (Though they're just as good.)


Monkey bread: 5/5
The monkey bread is kind of like a sticky bun. It's really sweet and it pretty much just tastes like a caramel-drenched croissant. Like I said it's pretty damn sticky. But I couldn't stop eating it so be careful. It's big but it goes by quick. Monkey bread, by the way, I think involves just little lumps of bread that you can break off into little bites.

But this croissant bread pudding. Oh man.


Croissant bread pudding: 5/5
It's bread pudding so it's already good. And it's made with a croissant? Oh hells yea. This is super moist and flaky and it comes with ice cream and raspberry sauce on top, plus more raspberry sauce and lemon cream on the side. The interior is nice and hot. I couldn't stop eating this and unfortunately for my scale I finished the whole thing. I still wanted more. Damn do I love me some bread pudding.

One thing that isn't good (the only thing): the coffee. It's pretty bitter. We tried the decaf and the regular and they're both equally not-good.


It's from Kingdom coffee if I'm not mistaken. Nix that place. Not sure if Coffee Republic next door is any better.

Happy hour is from 2-4pm on weekdays! You can get a four-dollar mini crepe from any one listed on the menu.

Service here is excellent. Always a smile on the face, a thank you for coming in and hope to see you soon. It's a nice quaint little shop, not too busy in the afternoons but definitely popular in the mornings. Either get there early or order your pastries ahead of time like I do because they sell out like hotcakes. Is that the phrase? I don't know. But they go away in a rapid fashion, is what I am trying to say.

Upcoming: my review of their pastry selection...

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