Tiramisu at Sarducci's

Thankfully the holidays are over and so, I hope, my crazy schedule and not enough time in front of my computer. Not that I haven't eaten any desserts, mind you, just that they were in the midst of a meal, were some fruitcake like thing I wouldn't want you to eat, or I simply was so rushed with all the gift swapping and other insanity that goes on, that snapping a photo and finding time to write about it was nearly impossible.

Time to breathe. Time to relax. Time to rediscover a real dessert!

So, there I was on Saturday. I found myself with time enough to spend with a friend in Montpelier, and we were both very hungry. It was a beautiful day - so a walk seemed like a good idea to get to the downtown area just a few blocks away. Sooner than we though we found ourselves walking into Sarducci's Restaurant for some Italian food in lovely Montpelier, VT.

Taking a seat by the window, the first order of business was a nice bottle of wine. As I said, I had some time and it was, all things considered, pretty early in the day. The choice of the day was the fairly inexpensive but flavorful Sangiovese Il Bastardo. When I'm sitting down for a meal that starts with roasted garlic and bread, then I better have a pretty flavorful wine to go along with it. A little air, a little more flavor saturated food and the wine began to develop and lend it's great fruit tones to the meal. So there it was, after a wonderful dinner of Mushroom Ravioli and Steak, it was time for the dessert menu! Which you may have guessed, or may already know, is my favorite part!

Well, since I haven't eaten there much before (only once in fact, and it was year ago) I decided to go my all time favorite dessert - Tiramisu! It's the yardstick of the dessert world, if your Tiramisu is good, then you're OK in my book.

The dessert was nearly divine. The chocolate on top wasn't sprinkled cocoa, in fact it was dark chocolate, giving a nice bitterness of the dark chocolate to the sweet fluffiness of the Marscapone. The only thing that seemed slightly amiss was the rum. It wasn't exactly as I expected, there wasn't much of a lasting flavor, it just seemed to disappear very quickly - which led me to believe it wasn't rum at all. The real stuff has the habit of hanging on a bit longer, and it's exactly what made my first attempts at making my own Tiramisu a miserable failure. Too much rum soaked into lady fingers can be a bad thing. Of course, it was the third time that ended up being the time I trusted myself to just touch the ladyfingers to the rum mixture.

So that one slight fault aside, the Tiramisu was very, very enjoyable. Of course, I certainly understand the reasons for not having actual rum in a dessert, but if I had my druthers, it would have been there. It was an empty hole in an otherwise complete meal. However, it was a tiny hole and I can assure you that next chance I get, I might find myself inside Sarducci's eating another meal and, perhaps, following it up with another taste of their Tiramisu.