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| - To add to my impressive collection of two-star reviews, ladies and gentleman I proudly give you Sweets Raku, quite possibly the crown jewel of mediocrity.
Somehow we learned about this place and, like communism, should have been great in theory. Sadly, this was as disappointing as going to see Phantom of the Opera to find out that Crawford and Brightman are ill, and their stand-ins are Willie Nelson and Roseanne Barr.
This place is in a strip mall with a glass front that shows the wine selection. Behind the wine selection are uncomfortable chairs at the tables and very uncomfortable stools at the countertop. Sterile white walls and floors do their best to un-impress as you wait in a long line for one of 24 seats in the entire place. Despite it's undeserved popularity, they have not expanded, so you will wait for about 40 minutes if you're lucky.
Let's get to the dessert - which is their "specialty". We had the Mars, their most popular dessert, which involves lighting on fi-- wait, no we didn't, they ran out on Friday night. I meant to say we ordered the Ringo, which was a mock apple pie. The apple pie is in a puff pastry of sorts, with forgettable ice cream and an edible ornament fallen off your Christmas tree that is shiny and stuffed with whipped cream and a hint of caramel. For $12, I'd recommend you buy 2 Costco pies.
Then we had a $12 parfait that they pour sauce into, and that's supposed to be amazing or something. It wasn't - it was no better than McDonald's parfait.
Then they ran out of the Ringo, too, arguably a runner up to the Mars plate - remember, this was a Friday night when they should have expected to be busy. If you study the staff, you'd quickly see that nobody appears to have worked in a restaurant before. They are not sure when to seat guests, when to wipe down tables, when to run credit cards, how to serve everyone in the party at the same time, though they are genuinely sweet (even if their desserts are not).
It's a novelty - it's so shameful that they had a good idea once and didn't expand on it, didn't develop themselves as a company. This fad will die if they don't figure out how the food industry works - mediocrity kills business. $12 desserts need to be amazing, and these are not.
Sweets Raku - overblown, just like their soufflé.
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