Husband and wife Manoli and Aoleen Stavrulakis have built a thriving business crafting crepes -- and more -- for those who like their meals hearty and healthy and anything but run of the mill.
An instance of the public's craving for crepes convinced Manoli there was a market for the light, luscious, pancake-like treats when he was working as a chef at Thomas Memorial Hospital a few years ago.
"In the beginning, I was making crepes once, then twice a week, including a special of whatever I liked," Manoli said. "The first day I made them, I had to work until 2:30 for the lunch time, but I sold out the crepes at one o'clock. The next day, my supervisor came by and said everybody was crazy about the crepes, so I made them again. The second time, I made a chicken crepe; the first time was a dessert crepe.
<>br> "They loved what I did," he said, "so when I went home, I told Aoleen, 'You know what? It's time to open a creperie in Charleston.' That's how we started."
The 20-years-married couple had already built a strong clientele base while operating Mykonos restaurant on Capitol Street in downtown Charleston. That foundation has led them to the creation of the Creperi Cafe, Pizza Barbarossa at 100 RHL Blvd. in South Charleston and a new, European-style pastry shop, Sokolata, scheduled to open in January in South Charleston.
Manoli and Aoleen opened the original Creperi Cafe in 2007 on 40th Street in Kanawha City.
"It was a small location," Aoleen said. "It was something very unique for us, but we didn't have a lot of options or variety. We were just serving coffee and dessert crepes, which brought us a lot of customers, but we had just two parking spaces and three or four tables inside and two outside. We had a family atmosphere. People felt comfortable there. It was a very cozy place.
"I used to go to the Kanawha City store after I'd drop my kids off at elementary school in the morning," Aoleen recounted. "My regular customers would be waiting outside for me. They'd help me put the tables out and the chairs down, like a family, you know? I'd know what they'd like to eat and what they wanted to drink. They'd wait for me even I was late; they understood my situation."
After four years in Kanawha City, Manoli and Aoleen relocated the Creperi Cafe to their current, larger eatery at 55 RHL Blvd. at the Shops of Trace Fork in South Charleston, between Dick's Sporting Goods and Marshalls. When Manoli opened Pizza Barbarossa in 2011 and took charge of its day-to-day operations, Aoleen became the full-time manager of the new Creperi Cafe site, which, she admitted, was challenging for her initially.
"To be honest, it was a big change for me, a big responsibility, to move from one small place with a very limited menu and no employees in Kanawha City to here with a big menu, a lot of things to prep, dealing with a lot of employees. It was something hard for me at the beginning. At the same time, it was hard for me to leave the other location, because I liked that place. It was like a second home for me."
Nonetheless, she was able, over a short period of time, to put her imprint on the new Creperi Cafe and enlarge the menu and client base.
"We were looking for a place where we had an option to sell more things, more food, light meals, and do whatever we wanted to do and expand the menu," Aoleen said.
Always Homemade and Fresh
While crepes are, of course, the coveted specialty of the house, the Creperi Cafe provides a much broader menu of healthy, wholesome choices.
"We brought some of our old recipes from when we had Mykonos in downtown Charleston; that was from 1999 to almost 2006. At this location, we tried to bring some of our recipes that people loved at Mykonos, like the lemon chicken rice soup, our gyros and our Greek salads. Those things were very popular and people still talk about them. We put some of the old items we served, with still the same recipes and same ingredients, on the menu."
Aoleen stressed that all Creperi Cafe offerings are fresh and homemade and that she's a constant stickler for their quality.
"We try to do our best each and every single day. We try to do better every day. We learn. We make mistakes and learn from our mistakes and try to do better," she said.
"We try to improve ourselves. We're always trying something new, putting some new items on the menu, trying new ideas," she added.
"We focus a lot on fresh foods, fresh ingredients, homemade food. People are looking for healthier foods now. It's not like it used to be; people are more educated now about what they will eat and what they won't eat.
"Here, what I serve I believe myself. I eat my food. When I eat my food, then I know I'm eating right and I will serve it to my customers," said Aoleen. "When I don't like something, I won't serve it to my customers.
"Our soups are all homemade. We make chicken lemon rice soup, our house soup, which is very popular. It's very healthy -- particularly healthy for cold weather."
Soups of the day are served at the Creperi Cafe, too, including white bean, split pea, lentil, creamy mushroom, potato and vegetable varieties.
"Sometimes, salesmen will come to me and say, 'Hey, Aoleen, we offer this kind of soup. It's easy, it's ready, it's tasty. Other restaurants buy it.' I'm like, 'You know what? My customers have tasted my food for all these years and they know if this is me or not.' If I would serve it to them, they would know this is not my soup. I would never give my customers something that's frozen or ready-to-go. I won't eat it and I don't want them to eat it, too."
The crepes are available made with regular flour and buckwheat flour, she said. "Now we're serving gluten-free crepes for a lot of people," she said.
Aoleen said the Creperi Cafe salads are cut fresh every morning and afternoon. "That way, we can always keep it fresh. We cook our chicken fresh every afternoon before lunch and later in the evening for the dinner shift.
"Our dressings are all homemade. We make a very nice Greek dressing, which is olive oil with spices on it and vinegars. It's very light and healthy.
"A favorite with our customers is our sauces. We make the tzatziki sauce. It's sour cream and cucumber with olive oil. It's very healthy. People are crazy about this sauce. I would say 90 percent of my customers ask for extra sauce. They love it."
Aoleen said the Creperi Cafe menu also appeals to a frequently finicky segment of the dining set: children.
"Little kids come here and the chicken lemon rice soup is their favorite," she said. "When I see that, I say, 'Wow! That's good!' Kids who are 3, 4, 5 years old eat the salmon crepes and the gyros. That makes me very happy. That's what I like to see."
Manoli and Aoleen's sons, Chris and Alex, grew up in their parents' restaurant businesses and have pitched in at Creperi Cafe regularly.
"My oldest son works here two or three days a week," Aoleen said. "It helps him with his expenses and helps him learn responsibilities. He learns where the money comes from, how it doesn't come easy."
Sokolata
"A few years ago, we started talking about how Charleston needed a dessert place," Manoli said. "A real European-style pastry store, not with too much sugar and icing and that sort of stuff. I love desserts and I said, 'Someday I'm going to do something like this for Charleston.'"
To launch Sokolata, Manoli enlisted the assistance of a colleague from Greece who had helped him get Pizza Barbarossa up and running. He is also visiting similar pastry and gelato merchants and suppliers in Charlotte and other areas for inspiration. He said he has purchased equipment for Sokolata from New York, Baltimore and Washington, D.C.
"We're going to make gelato from scratch," Manoli said. "For the desserts we make, the secret will be our desserts will be [available] on limited days, a maximum of five days we'll sell them. Why? We're using the freshest ingredients, the good stuff, and we won't put heavy butters into them. You're going to have flavors that explode in your mouth."
Aoleen and her staff will be offering some of the Sokolata menu temptations in advance for customers at the Creperi Cafe until the South Charleston store opens next month. Items will include gelato, chocolate mousse, Belgian chocolates, cupcakes and cakes freshly prepared for a variety of occasions.
"We're excited and we're happy," Manoli said. "My bonus is when I see people talking about what I'm doing, about my food. ... When you hear those things, you feel, 'I've done something here people like.' They support us, they come back and make us feel like more than family members even if we weren't born here."
The Creperi Cafe's hours of operation are 10 a.m. until 9 p.m. Monday through Saturday and 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Sunday. Patrons are welcome to dine in or they can place their orders for carry-out.
For additional information about the Creperi Cafe menu items or to place an order, phone 304-746-4040, go online to www.cafecreperi.com or visit the Creperi Cafe's Facebook page.
An instance of the public's craving for crepes convinced Manoli there was a market for the light, luscious, pancake-like treats when he was working as a chef at Thomas Memorial Hospital a few years ago.
"In the beginning, I was making crepes once, then twice a week, including a special of whatever I liked," Manoli said. "The first day I made them, I had to work until 2:30 for the lunch time, but I sold out the crepes at one o'clock. The next day, my supervisor came by and said everybody was crazy about the crepes, so I made them again. The second time, I made a chicken crepe; the first time was a dessert crepe.
<>br> "They loved what I did," he said, "so when I went home, I told Aoleen, 'You know what? It's time to open a creperie in Charleston.' That's how we started."
The 20-years-married couple had already built a strong clientele base while operating Mykonos restaurant on Capitol Street in downtown Charleston. That foundation has led them to the creation of the Creperi Cafe, Pizza Barbarossa at 100 RHL Blvd. in South Charleston and a new, European-style pastry shop, Sokolata, scheduled to open in January in South Charleston.
Manoli and Aoleen opened the original Creperi Cafe in 2007 on 40th Street in Kanawha City.
"It was a small location," Aoleen said. "It was something very unique for us, but we didn't have a lot of options or variety. We were just serving coffee and dessert crepes, which brought us a lot of customers, but we had just two parking spaces and three or four tables inside and two outside. We had a family atmosphere. People felt comfortable there. It was a very cozy place.
"I used to go to the Kanawha City store after I'd drop my kids off at elementary school in the morning," Aoleen recounted. "My regular customers would be waiting outside for me. They'd help me put the tables out and the chairs down, like a family, you know? I'd know what they'd like to eat and what they wanted to drink. They'd wait for me even I was late; they understood my situation."
After four years in Kanawha City, Manoli and Aoleen relocated the Creperi Cafe to their current, larger eatery at 55 RHL Blvd. at the Shops of Trace Fork in South Charleston, between Dick's Sporting Goods and Marshalls. When Manoli opened Pizza Barbarossa in 2011 and took charge of its day-to-day operations, Aoleen became the full-time manager of the new Creperi Cafe site, which, she admitted, was challenging for her initially.
"To be honest, it was a big change for me, a big responsibility, to move from one small place with a very limited menu and no employees in Kanawha City to here with a big menu, a lot of things to prep, dealing with a lot of employees. It was something hard for me at the beginning. At the same time, it was hard for me to leave the other location, because I liked that place. It was like a second home for me."
Nonetheless, she was able, over a short period of time, to put her imprint on the new Creperi Cafe and enlarge the menu and client base.
"We were looking for a place where we had an option to sell more things, more food, light meals, and do whatever we wanted to do and expand the menu," Aoleen said.
Always Homemade and Fresh
While crepes are, of course, the coveted specialty of the house, the Creperi Cafe provides a much broader menu of healthy, wholesome choices.
"We brought some of our old recipes from when we had Mykonos in downtown Charleston; that was from 1999 to almost 2006. At this location, we tried to bring some of our recipes that people loved at Mykonos, like the lemon chicken rice soup, our gyros and our Greek salads. Those things were very popular and people still talk about them. We put some of the old items we served, with still the same recipes and same ingredients, on the menu."
Aoleen stressed that all Creperi Cafe offerings are fresh and homemade and that she's a constant stickler for their quality.
"We try to do our best each and every single day. We try to do better every day. We learn. We make mistakes and learn from our mistakes and try to do better," she said.
"We try to improve ourselves. We're always trying something new, putting some new items on the menu, trying new ideas," she added.
"We focus a lot on fresh foods, fresh ingredients, homemade food. People are looking for healthier foods now. It's not like it used to be; people are more educated now about what they will eat and what they won't eat.
"Here, what I serve I believe myself. I eat my food. When I eat my food, then I know I'm eating right and I will serve it to my customers," said Aoleen. "When I don't like something, I won't serve it to my customers.
"Our soups are all homemade. We make chicken lemon rice soup, our house soup, which is very popular. It's very healthy -- particularly healthy for cold weather."
Soups of the day are served at the Creperi Cafe, too, including white bean, split pea, lentil, creamy mushroom, potato and vegetable varieties.
"Sometimes, salesmen will come to me and say, 'Hey, Aoleen, we offer this kind of soup. It's easy, it's ready, it's tasty. Other restaurants buy it.' I'm like, 'You know what? My customers have tasted my food for all these years and they know if this is me or not.' If I would serve it to them, they would know this is not my soup. I would never give my customers something that's frozen or ready-to-go. I won't eat it and I don't want them to eat it, too."
The crepes are available made with regular flour and buckwheat flour, she said. "Now we're serving gluten-free crepes for a lot of people," she said.
Aoleen said the Creperi Cafe salads are cut fresh every morning and afternoon. "That way, we can always keep it fresh. We cook our chicken fresh every afternoon before lunch and later in the evening for the dinner shift.
"Our dressings are all homemade. We make a very nice Greek dressing, which is olive oil with spices on it and vinegars. It's very light and healthy.
"A favorite with our customers is our sauces. We make the tzatziki sauce. It's sour cream and cucumber with olive oil. It's very healthy. People are crazy about this sauce. I would say 90 percent of my customers ask for extra sauce. They love it."
Aoleen said the Creperi Cafe menu also appeals to a frequently finicky segment of the dining set: children.
"Little kids come here and the chicken lemon rice soup is their favorite," she said. "When I see that, I say, 'Wow! That's good!' Kids who are 3, 4, 5 years old eat the salmon crepes and the gyros. That makes me very happy. That's what I like to see."
Manoli and Aoleen's sons, Chris and Alex, grew up in their parents' restaurant businesses and have pitched in at Creperi Cafe regularly.
"My oldest son works here two or three days a week," Aoleen said. "It helps him with his expenses and helps him learn responsibilities. He learns where the money comes from, how it doesn't come easy."
Sokolata
"A few years ago, we started talking about how Charleston needed a dessert place," Manoli said. "A real European-style pastry store, not with too much sugar and icing and that sort of stuff. I love desserts and I said, 'Someday I'm going to do something like this for Charleston.'"
To launch Sokolata, Manoli enlisted the assistance of a colleague from Greece who had helped him get Pizza Barbarossa up and running. He is also visiting similar pastry and gelato merchants and suppliers in Charlotte and other areas for inspiration. He said he has purchased equipment for Sokolata from New York, Baltimore and Washington, D.C.
"We're going to make gelato from scratch," Manoli said. "For the desserts we make, the secret will be our desserts will be [available] on limited days, a maximum of five days we'll sell them. Why? We're using the freshest ingredients, the good stuff, and we won't put heavy butters into them. You're going to have flavors that explode in your mouth."
Aoleen and her staff will be offering some of the Sokolata menu temptations in advance for customers at the Creperi Cafe until the South Charleston store opens next month. Items will include gelato, chocolate mousse, Belgian chocolates, cupcakes and cakes freshly prepared for a variety of occasions.
"We're excited and we're happy," Manoli said. "My bonus is when I see people talking about what I'm doing, about my food. ... When you hear those things, you feel, 'I've done something here people like.' They support us, they come back and make us feel like more than family members even if we weren't born here."
The Creperi Cafe's hours of operation are 10 a.m. until 9 p.m. Monday through Saturday and 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Sunday. Patrons are welcome to dine in or they can place their orders for carry-out.
For additional information about the Creperi Cafe menu items or to place an order, phone 304-746-4040, go online to www.cafecreperi.com or visit the Creperi Cafe's Facebook page.
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