Sometimes it’d be nice to have a time machine to allow you to relive your cringiest childhood moments which were, lowkey, actually very cool. Online, we have such a machine: the Wayback Machine. Thanks to this meticulous archiving of all the internet’s bullshit, I was able to trawl up a website I made in year 6 to review crepes. I present to you, Crepe Club.
Crepe Club was more than just a website. It was a group activity, an after-school ritual, a way of life. Basically, we’d get together, go to food courts, gorge on crepes and then review the shit out of them on this swanky late-2000s website.
All of this knowledge was compiled into what was perhaps the most thorough compendium of Sydney crepe cafe goss at the time.
Now that I’ve found it again, a whole slew of weird memories have suddenly been unlocked deep inside of me. Notice that title font? It’s the same one they used in the TV show Archer, a year after Crepe Club was launched. I’m not saying they copied it, but you do the math.
Some things have changed, too. None of the tacky Flash widgets work anymore. The formatting is disheveled. There are broken links all over the place. Perhaps most surprising thing was that a total of 40 people made accounts, even though it started out as a game with me and a few mates.
Of course, we tried to include a directory of every crepe shop in Sydney, which very quickly expanded internationally. For this reason it skewed towards Australia and, for some reason, the Gulf States.
This was back in 2008, mind you, well before it was normal for restaurants and cafes to have their own websites.
See that listing for Croatia? I put it in as an (admittedly weird) joke because my background’s Croatian. Lo and behold, when I finally visited Croatia over a decade later, I was stopped dead in my tracks when I coincidentally walked past that very same establishment. Small, small world, I tell ya.
The directory was not without feedback from the general public. In the preserved comments section, I found one person trying to add their own crepe shop to the list. They commented in 2011, long after the site had fallen into disuse. Little did they know they could’ve added it to the list themselves. How foolish of them.
Good day Crepe lovers the world over, just a note to let you all know that their is a crepe shop @ 5 Quebec St. Guelph,Ontario, Canada…
Alrighty, let’s dig into some REVIEWS.
First up is Fabulous Fillings, the now-closed crepe shop at the food court around the corner from my primary school. A very divisive place, apparently.
The “o’ by the way PRAISE JESUS ✝” comment in my friend’s review is a nice touch, in my opinion.
We had the worst fucken usernames which really do belong on a site for discussing something other than crepes.
Then there was the fabled Sunflower Cafe. This place was around the corner from my uni, and I can confirm, the crepes are still good all these years later.
And who could forget the time Crepe Club got the scoop of a local crepe cafe burning down? I literally saw it with my own eyes. Thankfully, nobody was hurt.
I’m still waiting for my Walkley Award for my first foray into breaking news.
How about some DRAMA? Strap in.
Near where my friends and I grew up was a cafe where we literally had the worst crepes of our lives. Obviously this traumatic experience warranted three very scathing reviews.
However, three years AFTER the site had been dormant, a guy who we’re 90% sure was grumpy manager made an account and DELETED the bad reviews. Vandalism!
Then, someone in Maryland (as in, the US), spammed our site with some kind of advertisement.
Crepe Club prided itself on neutrality (except for the reviews) however a decade later, I must say I respect their hustle. Whrilz Yogurt Bar… hello.
Speaking of Maryland, a middle-aged woman from Baltimore – I shit you not – somehow interloped into our all-Aussie, after-school school activity. Calling herself crepemakingmama, she even solicited my help in writing a review.
I replied, of course, with the decorum of a telemarketer. Because that’s how you run a professional-looking website when you’re 12 or whatever.
With that, crepe club had truly gone international. Thank you, crepemakingmama.
We also had a forum, which started out with the usual MSN-era spam. However after we had abandoned the site, it started being used (unsuccessfully) by people who actually owned crepe cafes. Wow!!
Ok, that’s pretty much all the moderately interesting shit I could uncover from the dusty depths of Crepe Club.
Although we probably stopped using the site in year 7, that didn’t mean we stopped getting crepes. In fact, I literally had a crepe night with one of the users in these screenshots last week. It was fucken DELICIOUS.
Turns out Crepe Club is not about a website. It’s about sharing beautiful food with dear friends.
PS: I’m taking the URL with me to the grave, so don’t bother asking.
