DC Food Trip, Finale

This lovely young woman is Stephanie. She is grinning at the camera not because she's getting ready to see Eddie Izzard but because she's poised over a tray of three gorgeous little dishes of crème brûlée. We're still at Belga Café, still full and happy from our meal and beer.

The brûlée on the right is either maple or molasses and it was delicious, the brown sugar was crackly perfectly on top and the creamy dense custard inside tasted like ginger snap cookie pudding. Thank god it was so good as it was the high point of the course. The one in the center was supposed to be vanilla cb with five peppers (?) and strawberry topping. The one to the left should have been pistachio cb with tapioca topping. Instead, the center was pistachio cb (clearly, as it was green) with strawberry topping and it was so-so. The strawberry topping was good but the pistachio was underwhelming. Plus, cb should be crackly on top or it's just custard.

The third dish contained what was to be the real problem of the night. As far as we could tell it was the vanilla with five peppers (never understood, never explained) with the misplaced tapioca topping (identified by the tapioca pearls). Steph, the cb afficianado, took one bite and the sides of her smile dropped. "Taste this." I did, and it was bad. Not as in "I don't like this," more like "this dessert is really old or has been left out of the fridge and has gone off." We both tried another small taste before suggesting to the waiter that something might be wrong. His response was "Oh, that one's my favorite. But lots of people don't like it." No "Let me take that back to the kitchen." No "customer is always right" attitude here! Maybe if we'd been obnoxious instead of excruciatingly polite he wouldn't have blown us off.

To further add insult to injury a manager came by and asked us how things were. We said the meal and beer were great but something wasn't right with this one cb. He also informed us that that was the least popular flavor and breezed off. Clearly our palates aren't sophisticated enough for Belga Café's rancid crème brûlée. Our powers of observation also don't allow us to remember which topping should be on which dessert. Hmm.

Love the mussels, love the beer, but the dessert experience left such a bad taste in my mouth it will be a while before I go back.