Jeff Spurlin brings a taste of France to Helena.

Out of the condensed space that is the Filling Station Creperie, Spurlin and staff dispense crepes, café and cuisine française au Montana at the busy corner of Benton and Euclid avenues. Some days you'll see a vintage, two-cylinder Citroen out front.

Described as simple and funky, the joint is much more than a weekend breakfast novelty. To many Helenans, he's perfected the art of the crepe. Uh, what is a crepe?

"It's just a simple peasant fare that started 400 years ago in the Brittany region," Spurlin says. Traditionally, buckwheat -- a seed -- was ground into a paste, slapped on a hot rock, peeled off and dipped in buttermilk.

Spurlin will reveal some of his secrets -- sans hot rock -- to lucky ticketholders during the 15th annual Artbeats Chefs Tour May 17. The benefit is for the Helena Symphony, Grandstreet Theatre and the Holter Museum of Art.

For the rout, four local families have offered their kitchens to four area chefs. The chefs stay in one kitchen all day, with participants traveling to each location for about an hour. Ticketholders sample the fare and get a cooking lesson. In addition to Spurlin, participating chefs are Scott Carpenter of the Silver Star Steak Company, Ersun Ozer of the Mediterranean Grill, and Clayton Arakawa of the Grand Union Hotel in Fort Benton.

Spurlin hosted the tour twice and cooked for it two times, too. For this year's edition, he'll create a buckwheat-with-spinach souffle crepe he found on a recent trip to Brazil. Ticketholders will construct a "rake," too, which is necessary to spread out the crepe batter on a cast iron griddle.

Spurlin, a one-time Carroll College student, hails from Minnesota's Twin Cities. He started cooking under Al Bohlee at the Colonial Inn (now the Red Lion Colonial Inn) and moved downtown to become executive chef at the Montana Club.

"I forgot all about college," Spurlin says, sitting at a table on a recent weekday afternoon after what he calls a steady day. "I decided I like this (cooking) better."

He's perhaps best known as the former owner of The Bistro, which opened in 1987. The Bistro, revered by locals, was opened after another venture, the Chapter Seven restaurant, closed. Spurlin opened the creperie two years ago, after selling the Bistro and travelling Europe.

While in the Brittany region of France, he saw a creperie in a space the size of a phone booth and thought, "I can do that."

Francophiles are known to stop by the creperie for cheap eats and sometimes the latest gossip, usually before 9 a.m. "Crepe complete" -- egg and cheddar -- and the four-berry crepe are favorites.

"You hear a lot of French being spoken," Spurlin says.

Carroll College music professor Joe Munzenrider favors the ham-and-cheese crepe. As an April Fool's Day joke, Spurlin created a Spam-and-Velveeta cheese concoction in Munzenrider's "honor." About 10 Crepes Munzenriders sold.

Munzenrider loves the creperie's, how do you say, joie de vie.

"I love crepes. It's the only place where you can get a small portion if you don't want a big portion," Munzenrider says, who treks to Paris -- and samples crepes -- about once a year. "It's very European, how everything is crammed on top of (itself)."

Spurlin says another customer, a French native, helped him set up his griddle -- a well-seasoned, grooved cast iron surface. "He said, 'You don't need any training, this is just like my mother's,'" Spurlin says.

Old-style crepes got a bad name, Spurlin says, because they were thicker, smaller and filled with heavy ingredients. But they've changed, he says, for the better. In general, people favor fresh, raw ingredients over "mystery factory" fare, he says.

Spurlin calls his style "fusion-style French, but Montana friendly." His customers are his influences.

"I just listen to what they say and look at the plate when they're done," he says.