In a renovated Victorian-style house, Vivace warms the soul with coffee and crêpes. It’s nicely decorated with comfortable chairs, couches, and a great patio space. The only problem can be squeezing into one of these spaces, as it does get crowded, and this isn’t really a hostess-and-reservation kind of place. Channel your inner Viking and claim a seat, then growl at anyone who comes too close.

The sandwich board listing the available crêpes is in a hokey Comic Sans font (yes, we’re obsessed with fonts), which tells you almost everything you need to know about the vibe here. It’s cute but not cutting-edge, competent but not mind-blowing.

For instance, some savory crêpes come with mozzarella cheese. Who puts a cheese that bland in a crêpe? The fillings don’t get much more exciting, with what appears to be deli ham, flavorless chicken, spinach, tomatoes, and mushrooms. That’s it. The most exciting ingredient is walnuts, and nearly all of it relies on pesto for flavor. The crêpes themselves are properly made with buckwheat flour and are smooth as a baby’s butt, but there’s no crispy edge to them.

Sweet crêpes are made well with all-purpose flour, have some good spotting, and are jammed full of delicious Nutella and banana, but then doused in totally pedestrian aerosol-textured whipped cream. A simpler honey and butter crêpe is good (get it sans whip), but raspberry jam is just that: raspberry jam. What, no compote? Like we said, this isn’t that kind of place.

Stumptown coffee is served, but made this haphazardly, it could be from anywhere. There are some lovely little designs drawn in the latte foam, so there’s that. Smoothies are made from frozen fruit. Beers in the bottle are kind of knee-jerk, as is the wine list, which only specifies grape varietals (as if that tells you anything—ever had a Pinot Noir from Amador County, CA?), and not producers or regions.

We struggle to understand Vivace’s eternal popularity; it is our duty to respectfully dissent.