Ramekinda?

Ramekin is a new dessert place on Vermont. I love the idea: All desserts - baked things in ramekins, little pies and homemade ice cream - as well as foodie coffee! (By Handsome Roasters). Just the facts, ma'am.  What's not to love? (Except that their existance means that Paradis is no longer there, sadly).

I was very excited to try it, imagining a hot mess of earthly delights and simple pleasures.  A bare bones, bare-backed foodie romp with little room for pomp and circumstance...

Well, while the food itself would probably fit into those dreams, the presentation and "aura" of the whole shebang felt a little off to me, so it's tough to give Ramekin a 100% bonefide sexy recommendation just yet.  It felt slightly cold but aesthetically "correct", you know?  Maybe it was the energy of the people inside, not sure. The amazingly carved communal table was so awesome and made me want to crawl across it, but then my little cheescake was served on an oversized white plate in a very minimalist "high end restaurant" way. (Is that proper term? Ahem.) And that threw me off.

My friend Richard making the table look small.

If you're going to go with the rustic-wooden-furniture, chalk-board and basic-white-ramekins vibe, give me my cheese cake on a wooden cheeseboard or something, you know? No perfectly drizzled berry coulis necessary. Or, if you want that very tasty berry coulis to be there, just throw that shit over the cheesecake and let me deal with the mess! Or on a piece of parchment paper! A French newspaper!! Hey that's my style. Well, perhaps I'm getting a little silly but you get the jist. I'll buy it if you do. That's what I want if I'm at a place that is kind of marketing itself to be purely for indulging, because it helps me get into it. Or, at least, it helps me not think about "how they are doing it" but let's me just enjoy the ride. If I were ordering desserts from a fancy restaurant I'd get it, and that's great, but I'm not sure which Ramekin is going for and so that kind of affected my ability to get into it. It's like a super hot man that you fantasize about but when you are alone with him he winces at anything that might make him get a little messy. Boo.

So, perhaps it was just my expectations, as well.

In any case, they could just be working out the kinks since it's a new place of course. And maybe I'm just thinking too much of Cafe Vita or The Pie Hole (which I think nail this "rustic sexiness" thing very well).  It could also be that someone at Ramekin is simply caring too much about "gourmet" presentation when they should let the food speak for itself! Because it can! So many things now are "gourmet" in a food truck or a cooler attached to some dude's bike, I think they'd be just fine. In fact, isn't that the definition of the new high-end foodie movement? Let me eat my dessert out of a trough, please. I just might. No, but seriously...

I want them to get it right because their ice cream is so densely/accurately flavored and INCREDIBLE.  It was almost like eating cold, non-ice cream matter. Like how the new breed of coffee tasted after you were so used to brewed coffee.  It was incredible, and kind of didn't make sense but you were pretty sure it was the same thing. EARL GREY and Raw Vanilla were my favorites that I sampled. Also black sesame which is made with almond milk! It's freshy-fresh cold n' tasty in it's consistency, almost like sorbet but still sort of creamy. (Like the slushly basil-seed wonder at Mashti Malones). You know, for th' Vegans!

 

I went with my friend Richard and we shared the Cheesecake and Berry Cobbler. It was hard to control myself and not eat all of them by myself, but the sizes were still adequate. Though I did secretly wish the cobbler was in a ramekin twice the size of itself.

I wanted to mess it up so badly, in it's tidy little home. It had a delicate, brown-sugary, doughy-crumbly-buttery flavor in your cheek pocket, and a cold/hot melty-ice-cream thing on top which is of course perfect for Cobbler Town. Still, the more I think of it, it would have been nice if it was a tad bigger, or less expensive. It was $6. Again, we have the concept of the "gourmet experience" conflicting with a "let's just grab a sexy little $4 cobbler for dessert" bang for your buck thing. Which would be better I think. Otherwise, you're just going to a place that is serving you "restaurant desserts", which are usually a tad overpriced at about $6-8, when why not just go to the restaurant?

Anyway, I went off again. It's really not a big problem. The Cheesecake was amazeballs. Mascarpone. Yes thanks. I could eat it out of a tube...? Kind of? I didn't mind that it didn't have graham cracker anything, it was goddamn thick, creamy and good. I did feel a little sheepish that I was laying over that sexy wooden table, doing my best to get carnal on it's luscious little body when it was so neat and flower-shaped and tidy. Again! Sigh.

At the end of the whole affair our mess looked like a dragon, see?  Kundalini dragon-women energy is trying to get out, Ramekin! You are so close!

I will be back this weekend with plans to try the MOCHI WAFFLE CONE (I'm not even sure what that means but I love it) and a full-fledged order of ice cream, and/or possibly the chocolate bread pudding.  If I write back that I ended up getting arressted for shooting out those icy lightbulbs, replacing them with a giant fireplace and doing a naked go-go dance on the wooden table, consider yourself warned.