Breizh Cafe’s recipe book for crepes and galettes, by Bertrand Larcher

Like Japan, Italy and every other country that boasts a highly evolved gastronomic culture, France is big on regional specialities. Mention Caen to a Franco­phile foodie and what will come to mind is tripes à la mode de Caen.

The com­mune of Meaux, meanwhile, is known for brie cheese, while Troyes is famed for andouillette (a pungent sausage made almost entirely of intestines), Lorraine for its quiche, Alsace for choucroute and tarte flambée, and Bresse for poultry.

So when friends and I travelled to Brittany in nothwest France last month, we had a checklist of dishes we’ve eaten elsewhere, but which we had to try at “the source”: salted butter, oysters, crabs and lobsters, kouign amann (a laminated pastry that’s made up of almost-equal parts sugar, flour and butter), far Breton (a rich, dense flan), moules-frites washed down with local cider, and crepes and galettes.

For the latter, there was one place that topped the list: Breizh Cafe, in Cancale. This was the original restaurant of what has expanded into a chain by Bertrand Larcher. The chef is probably as famous in Japan as in France; in 1995, he followed a young lady, Yuko, whom he met in Geneva, back to her home in Tokyo, and, seeing a dearth of Breton creperies in Japan, opened several that were the precursers to Breizh Cafe.

Larcher was born on a farm in Brittany and, in his introduction, he writes: “From my earliest childhood, I was raised on the excellent fresh farm products of my own region, which not only made me extremely fussy about product quality as an adult, but also inspired [in] me an immense respect for the men and women who work on these farms [...] Year after year, living close to them, getting to know them, seeing them at work only deepened my admiration for them. It also proved a great incentive for me to create and develop Breizh Cafe, which should not only be seen as a chain of Breton creperies, but above all as a display shelf, a communications centre for all those excellent products and producers. Breizh Cafe is not just a restaurant – it is really a place for sharing knowledge [...]