The word “bistro” (according to the omniscient Wikipedia) is derived from a Russian word meaning “quickly.” The word became part of the French vocabulary after Napoleon made a few bad decisions and broad-shouldered Slavic fellows could be seen kicking their snow-proof boots onto Parisian café tables everywhere. Slavs are a demanding people: They wanted their food quickly, and lots of it. Hence the birth of bistros, or casual neighborhood restaurants where Frenchmen can quickly grab quality food and alcohol before resuming the arduous business of smoking cigarettes and making snooty comments all day.

What caused us to go to Bistro Maxine on a cold night last week was the expectation of quickness. You may think that food reviewers for a student magazine have life easy; you may think that nothing difficult or trying ever plagues our daily Daily lives (ha). Au contraire, mon petit squirrel: On the particular evening we made our trip to downtown Palo Alto, we had been engaged in a truly difficult exchange over the relative merits of a privatized education system and/or unbridled capitalism. Typical of most successful efforts to share opposing viewpoints in the Stanford Bubble, our “discussion” involved a great deal of tasteful foot stomping and pouting and ad hominem attacks. When Janet drew a switchblade, we finally decided it was time to take a wee break for food.

Maxine specializes in crepes, so we expected to allot about 15 minutes to the devouring of our meals. This is not because crepes are an indelicate food that can be gulped down without being savored, but because we are red-blooded Americans, and we thus assumed that the subtleties of crepe design, like the importance of existential philosophy, would most likely be lost on us.

We were very wrong. Dinner ended up taking more than an hour of our precious undergraduate homework/whisky time. And not because we ordered elaborate French dishes demanding fresh-picked truffles from Normandy: Our dinner order consisted of a single crepe and a croque-monsieur, a type of hot ham-and-cheese sandwich native to the land of le Francais.

The 45-minute wait was not as bad as it could have been for a few reasons. First, the ambiance. We usually hate that word, especially when used by twenty-somethings with very little aesthetic experience under their belts, but when we speak of Bistro Maxine’s good taste, we’re not speaking about the fake candles on all of the tables, or even the quaint furniture and gourmet bottled drinks dotting the tiny space with authentic Essence of Europe. We managed, luckily, to ignore the strangely loud elevator music and focus on the most important part of Maxine’s charm, which is its clientele: respectable-looking middle-aged denizens of Palo Alto with thick French accents, and thirty-something neighborhood regulars who come to the tiny creperie with well-behaved but quirky children in tow. One little girl tucked her doggie bag into the front of her coat and told us she was pregnant. Turns out we miss that kind of small-town charm in the emotional desert of University life. (In an effort to preserve the anti-collegiate charm, Maxine disallows the use of laptops in the café. Just a heads-up for that hungry college student looking for an A&P alternative.)

The less subjective part of Maxine’s charm lies in its excellent hot chocolate, which is served in a large bowl with a spoon. It’s not that the consistency of the chocolate demands spoon-eating — while it’s thicker than the typical Starbucks cup of hot cocoa, it’s not exactly hot molten choco-lava — but the sheer size of the bowl and the small mountain of whipped cream served atop the drink mean a lot of fun mixing action can happen with the spoon. For the adventurous, we recommend the Mexican ho-cho, which is una fiesta para la boca. And given the drink’s modest price, it’s our number one recommendation for the starving student.

The open kitchen — the dining area and the kitchen are only separated by a low counter — made for good theater on the particular evening we visited Maxine. The crepe-draper, who seemed to be having problems with getting the temperature of the griddle right, would dramatically slide his spatula under the setting crepe batter, only to find that the crepe ripped in half when he applied pressure to flip the crepe. The anguished sighs of the chef did help us wait without thinking we were being snubbed for being college-aged know-it-alls with a flair for snarky food reviews, but after a few flopped starts, we started becoming a little antsy. So, too, did the French couple seated next to us, as they started grumbling in low, sonorous French. “A leettle slow today, yes?” asked the gentleman of the waitress as she refilled his glass for the fifth time. (To her credit, the waitress politely apologized for the delay and explained that the griddle temperature was being challenging, and that the chef was making every effort to correct the problem.)

But the fact that all four tables stayed for the long wait is a testament to the quality of Maxine’s food. The menu showcases sweet and savory crepes, as well as the aforementioned croque-monsieur and croque-madame (a croque-monsieur with a fried egg atop it) and a selection of French coffees, wines and ciders. The food is well-prepared and served simply, but even the side dishes are taken seriously: A small side salad lightly tossed with a beautiful balsamic vinaigrette accompanied the savory crepes, while the sweet crepes were served with generous dollops of cream whipped on the premises.

Sweet crepes range from the simple combination of jam and butter to the exotically continental: Maxine offers crepes with chestnut purees, crepes drenched in orange and lemon juice, and even crepes with liquor-based fillings. While we didn’t have the chance to sample all of the crepes on the menu, the Suzette (the crepe wet with citrus juices mentioned earlier) and the Beurre Sucre, a simple crepe with just butter and sugar, were both delicious and faithful to their ingredients. The sweet crepes are crisp and thin without being brittle.

The savory crepes are thicker in order to support more substantial fillings, and are folded in a broad rectangular slabs. Our only complaint is that the amount of brie used in brie-ish crepes is tragically small and an insult to La Belle France. Otherwise, they are parfait. The array of savory crepes involves various combinations of meat, cheese and veg, all tastefully thrown together. They make for a filling-enough dinner for those who are not famished. The crepes are priced comparably to the next-door Coupa Café’s crepes — about $8 for crepe + side dishes. The much-awaited croque-monsieur turns out to be a sinful pile of Gruyere cheese on top of a ham sandwich, which is actually much tastier than it sounds, but not adventurous in the least. It’s the kind of kindergarten lunch fare that is perhaps best saved for days on which the soul is famished from unnecessary debates on academia and capitalism.

So try it. That is our much-awaited conclusion. We’ve never reviewed a French establishment before, so now that we’ve got the attention of the French, we’d like to take this opportunity to congratulate Sarkozy on bedding that foxy Carla Bruni. Hey hey, Nicolas. Hey hey.

Bistro Maxine is located at 548 Ramona Street, Palo Alto, CA 94301. For more information on Bistro Maxine, visit http://www.bistromaxine.com.