I admit it. I was wrong about Crepevine. Sure, it’s a chain and is not a high-end emporium, but it’s got a lot going for it. And the pithy description I gave it on the Restaurants page (“a girl place, not a guy place”) was plain erroneous. I ended up there the other night with a great colleague and friend who not only shares my enthusiasm for wine but who actually makes some great wine himself (in his garage in the Willows neighborhood of Menlo Park, basically across the creek from me). We were looking for a casual place to have dinner and to open the two bottles of wine we had brought. (Oddly, I brought a homemade wine crafted by someone I know and admire and he brought a bottle from a commercial, albeit boutique, winery.) Thus our main criterion for choosing a place to eat was the corkage fee. We were shocked that Cafe Epi not only quoted us a corkage fee of $20 per bottle (acceptable for a fine restaurant but not for a cafe as casual and far from fine dining as Cafe Epi) but would absolutely not negotiate any lower charge. We would have paid $10 per bottle for the two bottles and had dinner there. Instead we walked out, and walked into Crepevine. Corkage there was: zero. And for that price they brought the glasses and opened the wine for us.

The menus were laminated but the menu went way beyond crepes, with particular strength in sandwiches and salads. I was hungry for a good-sized salad so I ordered the Big Sur sandwich (grilled black angus bistro filet with grilled sweet onions, mushroom, and provolone on a soft roll) and a separate small Tossed Greens salad. The sandwich came with fries and a small salad on the same platter, so I figured that would give me the amount of salad I wanted. On that count I was wrong again. The “small” Tossed Greens salad was anything but. It would have fed both of us by itself, without the additional salad on the platter with the sandwich.

Some years ago, Mercury-News restaurant reviewer Aleta Watson did an expose on the calories contained in popular restaurant dishes. She recommended asking for a take-out container at the beginning of the meal and putting the excess calories (beyond what one meal should contain) into it before starting to eat. She accompanied this advice with dramatic photographs that made the front page of the Merc. I have admired Aleta for this idea but never was able to practice it, until this week at Crepevine. In one container I put half the sandwich and at least 2/3 of the fries. In the other I put as much of the Tossed Greens salad as would fit. What was left, combined with the salad on the sandwich platter, was beyond sufficient for a grown adult. And I had at least one large meal to take home for another day.

I liked the food, too, all of it. And I really loved the service. Bar none, every person we interacted with was friendly and helpful and cheerful. We had a great time. Oh, and we had some great wine.