The art of theFrench crêpe, at your table.

Born in Lyon in 1985 — France's gastronomic capital — Chef Djamel learned to cook before he could properly hold a whisk. His mother let him knead the doughs, fold the batters and decorate the cakes she made for the family's guests. What looked like child's play was, in fact, the first lesson of a life spent in front of stoves. He grew up in Lyon for twenty-four years.

Then, in February 2009, he set foot in London for the first time. He stayed. He scrubbed pans and studied chefs in a busy West End kitchen. Then Australia — two years across the restaurants of Perth and Melbourne. And finally Asia, where everything changed. In Bangkok, Hanoi, Penang, he watched cooks set a hot stone on a street corner and turn a crowd of strangers into a quiet, attentive audience. Cooking, live, in front of the people who would eat it: the gesture, the silence, the steam. He had found his form.

He came back to France with one idea: bring that street-food theatre to crêpes — the food he knew best. He bought a vintage Citroën HY van, the kind that delivered baguettes in the 1960s, and spent months in his father's workshop transforming it into a fully-equipped crêperie on wheels — copper trim, two stone billigs, hand-painted lettering. In 2012 he drove it onto a Richmond street, fired up the stones, and the first crowd gathered. La Crêpe des Délices was born.