Travel to France on Keawe Street

In a Hawaiian town, Oriental, American, and Hawaiian cuisine reign supreme. Our first journey for 2010 is to France for some crepes at Le Magic Pan. The small restaurant is right off of Waianuenue Avenue in a location known as Roussells in the past, another French restaurant that came and left. It is difficult for "exotic" ethnic restaurants to survive in Hilo

The lunch menu offered salads, soup, crepe entrees, and dessert crepes. The soup of the day was tomato with roasted red pepper soup. I had the Spanish Flamenco half crepe with salad. The crepe had shrimp, spinach, avocado, cheese. Half a crepe was quite enough as those little things are quite filling. The green salad had a big gob of ripe avocado and artichokes. The salad dressing was quite good. It is too bad the first serving of salad had a strand of hair in it. My salad was replaced by another.

Earlier in the week, I had the La Provencal crepe which I thought was more tasty than the Spanish Flamenco. The La Provencal is a chicken crepe which was quite cheesy and rich.

I had a glass of lemonade which was quite a good complement to the meal although wine would have been great. This place does not have a liquor license so if you wish to have wine, bring your own...there is no corkage fee.

We ended up with the Waimea strawberry dessert crepe. I did not like it because the syrup tasted like commercial strawberry syrup and the strawberry sauce did not look fresh...more along the bottled variety. There were also thin slices of bananas in the crepe. Although it looked very pretty, it was not up to par for the $8 it cost.

The half crepe with salad cost $11. My total bill was over $22 for lunch. I left the place very full but must admit that on the flavor meter, I would say I would rate the lunch at *** out of *****.

The best thing about the restaurant was that there were very few patrons so we were able to sit at our table and have a leisurely lunch in a quiet setting. As we were ready to leave, more people came into the restaurant so it was a perfect time to exit left.

Setting: **** Parking can be a problem
Cleanliness: **
Wait Service: ****
Deliciousness: ***
Cost: **

Overall Rating: ***

Am willing to give this place a chance and perhaps visit it in the evening and bring along a good bottle of wine.