Carmon’s Restaurant

LOVE! LOVE! LOVE! …We had a super afternoon at Carmon’s! Mike the owner gave us amazing food, and great memories of a lifetime… it was a culinary journey with mmmm mmmmm good french onion soup, warm crusty french bread and butter topped with black sea salt to start.
We stumbled across Carmon’s on our way from Chicago to New Orleans. Myself, My Mom and My Grandma giggled our hearts out and smiled for three hours while we enjoyed dish after dish, including a rock star crepes Suzette dessert!
Thank you Mike for the food, the music, laughs and a delightful afternoon that will go down in our «BEST OF list»…of great memories and great everything!

I came to Carmon’s for a small birthday dinner with my girls and I and I definitely didn’t regret it.
We had reservations and were seated right away. However, we eyed the small enclave booth and asked on a whim if we could be moved there. To our delight, they shifted us there without a fuss. This might have been because it was a relatively slow night for them, but either way, we were appreciative.
I had my absolute favorite savory crêpe: the smoked Amish ham with Gruyère cheese, caramelized onions and apple chutney. Oh. So. Good. I’m normally not a fan of cheese, but this Gruyère balances out the saltiness of the ham really well. The apple chutney adds a dash of sweetness to the mix and all the flavors just meld in your mouth to a wordless sound of pleasure. Highly recommended!

The Food is Good but the Customer Service is awful.
I went in with a group of my girlfriends for breakfast and the waiter was so unobliging. For example after ordering strawberry and peach french toast, I asked for strawberries on my french toast but peaches on the side (for my friend) — they came back with a mixture of strawberries and peaches on the side.
I thought it was a simple mistake and asked them to fix and was told to pick out the strawberries and put them on myself.
That was just one of many examples — After that the waiter basically ignored us the entire time and I had to get up and ask for condiments and refills on drinks.
Not worth the hassle. Try Original House of Pancakes for Breakfast Instead

We popped in on a Friday night around 7, after discovering every other restaurant was jammed. There were several tables available and both guys who waited on us were extremely friendly. The food trumped the service but that’s not to say the service was bad. It was just very laid back and, well, French! I can’t fault them for the table next to us being loud and drunk; I guess the wine must be good.
The stroganoff crêpe was delicious, as was the Nutella crêpe for dessert. I tried the French onion soup, something I am a snob about, and it was excellent.
I’d definitely go back — when I’ve saved some more pennies.

Went back to the C/​U this past weekend to visit old friends and haunts, and we returned to Carmon’s for our post night out breakfast/​brunch on Sunday. Love this place. My crêpe, which consisted of egg, goat cheese, tomatoes, and chicken, was phenomenal. I also sampled the french toast special as well as the spinach quiche, which was also quite delicious.
I have to give a shout out to our waiter, Grant, who we also had during the first visit. He is an absolute hoot. He definitely adds to the pleasurable experience. I suspect we will return to Carmon’s for brunch during our next visit.

I loooove Carmon’s. I’m just sad that I only discovered it a year before I left Champaign…
Both the savory and sweet crepes are absolutely delicious! I’ve never ordered anything else other than crepes here, since they’re just soo good here.
The curried chicken with green apple is one of my fav savory crepes, as is the fiery slow roasted pork with apple relish.
As for sweet crepes, I highly recommend the nutella crêpe with sour cream. You wouldn’t think something sour would go so well with nutella, but it does! And it only serves to enhance the flavors.
Overall, this is a great brunch place but it’s also very cozy for dinner. Eating at Carmon’s just feels like you’ve discovered a little piece of «Old Champaign» and that always makes me happy :). Now if only there were a Carmons-​esque restaurant near me right now…

Great place for a fancy breakfast. I love coming here for crepes, coffee, and a bloody mary if it’s that kind of morning.

Love crepes! I’ve always eaten them as desserts with chocolate and banana nutella. I’ve been to Paris twice and make a point to eat them when I’m there, but these are pretty amazing! The lunch crepes are great, and you can even build your own. A lot of people complain about the price but I htink the ingredients are stellar and worth every penny. Not to mention, I love that you can see the kitchen, and the place is really cute and quaint. I definitely recommend at least trying it out!

We went for dinner on a Sunday night. We were three of five customers in the restaurant, which was off-​putting. I guess they only just started serving dinner as well as breakfast and lunch. It would be a really great dinner joint if they dimmed the lights a little and played some romantic French music (instead of Johnny Cash… a bit much for nighttime).
The crepes were great. The service was great. Our server (#7? possibly the owner?) was quite jolly. I’ll go again sometime.

My husband and I really enjoyed the food here. The menu of crepes makes it a unique and fun place to go for dinner. I got the pulled pork crêpe and my husband got the ham, apples, and gouda crêpe. Both were excellent, although, mine was more packed with ingredients. We were too full to try dessert, but they looked amazing. I think we met the owner and he was the sweetest guy. Welcomed us to the city (since we recently moved here) and told us that we’re family now.
The food did take a bit longer than expected, but we like to think that was because it takes a while to make good, fresh food.

Still love Carmon’s! In response to other reviews — I only go when I want to enjoy an evening, not a fast food experience. The relaxed pace at Carmon’s is probably the most French thing about the place. That, and the buckwheat crepes remind me of my happiest afternoons in the Latin Quarter studying in Paris.
While I still order the steak frites, I have also branched out to quiches and desserts. Delish! Love how they keep in interesting. Can’t wait to go back.

I went here in search of a crêpe with Nutella and I got a really good crêpe. I wouldn’t exactly say this place is authentic French because you’ve got Americans cooking the food, but my crêpe was still good.
It doesn’t taste like the ones I had in France, Carmon’s puts a twist on (or maybe it was just overcooked) theirs by making the crêpe more firm.
The whipped cream was also made fresh and delightful. The prices were horrid though.
Crepes don’t cost that much to make, so they’re clearly overpricing here. Price is the only reason I won’t come back so often.

I have not had any nightmare experiences like other diners.
I adore the bread with smoked salt. The coffee (with constant refills) is excellent. The pork crêpe with fried egg is out of this world. So is the crêpe suzette. Definitely go for their specials – they’ve never let me down. The service has always been pleasant.
And, try to sit in the closed off booth or by the window :)

We drove around C-​U for awhile this past Saturday night, looking for a restaurant that didn’t have a line out the door. As we passed Carmon’s and noticed a sparsely populated dining room, we made our decision.
Walking in, we had a good feeling. The ambiance is really nice — very shabby chic with some refined touches. We were asked if we had a reservation (strange, as the place was nearly empty). As we were lead to our table, we passed another party who’d gotten their food. I noted how small and plain their crepes appeared, but they seemed to be enjoying them.
When we glanced at the extremely small menu (they have 6 – 7 appetizers and the same number of dinner crepes) with the extremely high-​end prices, we were a bit taken aback. Our initial – and not unpleasant – waitress was replaced by a sloppily dressed older woman who looked like she hadn’t smiled in decades. On top of it, she tended to bark more than speak (as in, she sounded like a heavy smoker getting over a cold), so we had trouble understanding her. We were more than confused… was this supposed to be a nice restaurant or a truck stop?
My husband ordered an $ 8 bowl of french onion soup to start, and a customized dinner crêpe for his main course ($ 13). I ordered a $ 13 ham and cheese crêpe. Ten minutes elapsed and the waitress brought «bread» to the table, which consisted of the heel of a mini-​baguette — about half of what one would get with a bowl of soup at Panera. Another ten minutes or so went by and they brought out the soup, which was actually pretty good. My husband took his time with the soup, and probably didn’t finish it for 10 or 15 minutes.
Once they took his empty soup bowl away, the wait began. After about 20 minutes, the waitress came back over and assured us that our ticket had already been submitted, but she asked my husband what he ordered again and, this time, actually wrote it down. We were not encouraged.
We probably did not get our food for another 20 – 30 minutes. And again, there were 2 other parties of 2 in the restaurant. With three line cooks and a chef in the kitchen, you’d think they could make two crepes in less time, considering that crepes are almost fast food in Europe. While we waited, no one came to update us. No one even looked at us. The owner is a tall, smug man who seems to do nothing but talk on the phone and walk around drinking wine and/​or coffee. He socialized with another table whom he clearly knew, but took no notice of the other diners in the restaurant or the fact that their tables had been empty for half an hour.
When the crepes finally arrived they were, as we’d witnessed, pretty insubstantial. For $ 13, you get a crêpe the size of a slice of Wonderbread. I agree with the other reviewer about the buckwheat — it really took away from the meal both in taste and appearance (they serve them on these brown plates that are almost the same color as the crepes… pretty unappetizing). Mine was unevenly heated and very salty. My husband says his was decent.
Since we were ravenous by the time we got our food, it didn’t take us long to finish it. The waitress eventually came back and, without a word, took our plates away. My husband attempted to ask for dessert menus, but she was already walking away from us, so his question was ignored.
We did get dessert menus a few minutes later, and the dessert prices were no better than the entrees. I got a $ 8 Nutella crêpe, but my husband refused to pay for dessert what he should have paid for dinner. We each ordered coffee, which took about 10 minutes to bring out. We wouldn’t have necessarily minded this, except the owner helped himself to a cup of coffee and walked right past us as we were waiting for ours. The dessert crêpe came much more quickly than dinner had, and was fine, but there’s not much you can do to mess up a Nutella crêpe. I will say that the buckwheat was too heavy for the rich filling. I don’t know why they couldn’t have used white flour.
With non-​alcoholic drinks, our bill came to $ 50, on which we left a minimal tip. We were there for almost two hours, and when we left, the dining room was still empty, save for two couples and a guy sitting at the bar who was obviously a friend of the owner.
We were both really disappointed in this local eatery, and I can’t imagine going back.

Miss this place, and that cute lil redhead that works there too! :)
Amazing Bloody Mary’s.
Really yummy french onion soup – it has a crêpe in it!
Beautiful ambiance… just adorable.

Carmon’s is a dingy little restaurant that has cute «authentic» touches here and there — fans that look like jet engines, mismatched salt and pepper sets, crappy paper menus shoved onto a clipboard, an antique cash register — but their menu lacks a certain something. I came here with my mom for Sunday brunch, and I was told beforehand that there is minimal waitstaff and apparently only one cook in the kitchen. So I expected slow service.
What I didn’t expect was crappy service, with the two waitresses serving everyone else before me and my mom, serving people who came after us, completely ignoring us for twenty minutes to get our order, plopping our plates down in front of us, and then giving us the wrong check, one that was ten dollars more than what we actualy ordered.
The food was standard. My mom had the ratatouille crêpe which was okay, but sort of tasted «earthy» (read: like dirt), and my spinach crêpe was drowning in creamed crap by the time I stuck my fork in it. And I asked for cheddar on top — what the hell? $ 2 for shitty American shredded cheese? My bad for expecting you to go out of your way to give me shavings of nice cheddar cheese.
Don’t expect me to come back here again. If I want to experience French food, I’ll go somewhere guests are actually appreciated and the food doesn’t take effing four hours to get to my table, while the owners and other waitresses mingle and act nice with people that look a certain type. No thanks.

Kind of an odd experience eating here. The menu is extremely limited, and the crepes are made of buckwheat, which is not a good thing. Some of the ingredients are very good and very high quality, such as local artisan cheeses, while others are very low quality, such as rubbery eggplant and frozen fruit. Everything was either really, really good or really, really bad. For the prices they charge, I expect EVERYTHING to be really, really good, so I doubt I’ll ever be back.
Service was fantastic, though our server was wearing a shirt cut so low that we could see the little bow on the front of her bra. It was pretty trashy for the otherwise very nice atmosphere. The portions are tiny, especially considering the prices. I had a salad, entrée, and dessert and would’ve left pretty hungry had I skipped the dessert.
Some of the food is quite enjoyable, and all of it would improve substantially if they used regular crepes instead of the buckwheat. I really liked what I dub «the world’s smallest salad,» and I would’ve enjoyed it even more if the tiny little thing hadn’t cost more than a full entrée does at many other restaurants in town. A lot of the food, including the crepes themselves, seem to be made ahead of time and warmed up instead of being made fresh. I think a lot of dishes are microwaved based on the funky texture and uneven temperature, which was very off putting. The peach crêpe I got for dessert was warm and wonderful around the edges, but by the time I got to the middle of it the peaches were still frozen. So, bad ingredients + bad microwaving = $ 7 dessert. No thanks.
Beer selection is good, but also very overpriced. Overall, while some of the food was quite delicious, I feel like I didn’t get enough of it for how expensive everything was, and some of it was pretty bad. I think this might be a good place to go just for drinks and dessert or something, but as a dinner destination I wouldn’t recommend it.

A nice change of pace for brunch – simple selections done well. We had the creamed spinach w/​bacon, scrambled eggs w/​gruyère & ham, and the sausage gravy crêpe, which worked surprisingly well. We especially loved the complimentary bread with butter with smoked sea salt — delicious. The escargots were quite good as well.
Also love the décor – the ad for pre-​mixed martinis in the bathroom made me laugh out loud.

I am pretentious and I love pretension. Carmon’s offers pretension and delicious taste all at once. I came in for brunch this morning, and loved the atmosphere, the overdone fin-​de-​siecle details, and… the crepes.
I had a delightful buckweat crêpe filled with eggs and bacon that was far more classy than a savoury breakfasty thing had any right being. I was also incredibly nervous as I was sitting with a Harvard professor and talking about Woodrow Wilson, or perhaps just from the very strong double espresso they whipped up here. Speaking of coffee, if you get a chance, order a cup of regular filter coffee. They’ll pour you a refill from a ginormous metal coffee urn that looks like it was filched from Scheherezade’s palace. No, seriously, it does. Or from Toulouse LaTrec (at least the John Leguizamo version).
Well worth a trip for brunch.

I came here for brunch on a Sunday with my bf, and we had a pretty good meal. I’d been hoping to check this place out for a while, as it’s located just three blocks from my apartment and I’d read good things about it. The food is French, mostly crepes, and pretty tasty.
We started with the pâté appetizer, which came with cornichons, sweet onion relish, old-​style mustard, and baguette: no complaints, it was very tasty. I then had the special French toast, which came with peaches: for some reason I expect fresh peaches, but they were canned. Still, it was pretty good. My bf got one of their loaded savory crepes, which had cheese, ham and a few other things, and I believe he liked it. We also had two glasses of French hard apple cider: delicious.
So the food was pretty good (but I still want to give it a try for dinner), and the service was also very friendly. Not too much of an ambiance, but it’s still a good place to go.