A Hater's Guide to the Burlington Creemee Scene

Maple and black raspberry twist creemee Credit: Diane Sullivan ©️ Seven Days

A creemee is a smoke break. A teen hands you a cup or cone, ideally through a dirty window. Then you stand outside or sit in your car and stare into the middle distance and do something with your mouth until there’s nothing left to do. You can’t think any big thoughts. You certainly can’t multitask. If you believe you can drive while eating a creemee, you are a threat to public safety.

The creemee experience isn’t just about the quality of the creemee but the totality of the circumstances surrounding its consumption. We have emerged from winter. We have cheated death. We deserve all the creemees we want, even shitty ones. Under the right conditions, the difference between a sublime creemee and a mediocre creemee doesn’t matter very much. But I think we sometimes go too far in our exaltation of all creemee experiences and fail to analyze the shortcomings of particular ones. Many things can go awry: air pockets between the folds (unforgivable), ice crystals, flavors that underachieve or overachieve, experiences that feel too experience-y. When I’m eating a creemee, I want to go blankly inward. I don’t want to be solicited by vibes.

In the name of Truth, which may not be your Truth, I went searching for transcendence at some popular creemee spots around Burlington. As is often the case, I mostly didn’t find it. This is a hater’s guide. I am a hater, not a scientist. I did not follow the scientific method. You’re welcome.

Burlington Bay
Market & Café

125 Battery St., Burlington, 864-0110, burlingtonbaycafe.com

Everyone in Burlington knows this place. I think it will survive the end of the world. When sulphur and ash rain from the skies, people will still line up for creemees at Burlington Bay.

Like at many establishments, Burlington Bay’s offerings are confined to the four elements of the Vermont flavor periodic table: vanilla, chocolate, maple and black raspberry. I don’t understand how black raspberry made it onto this list, which is so uniform across the land that it must have been ordained by God. Why black raspberry and not its proletariat cousin, raspberry? Why is there so much black raspberry in the creemee space when there’s so little of it in the world at large? Has this flavor ever touched an actual black raspberry? And why can it only be paired in a twist with maple and no other flavor?

These were the questions that haunted me when I went to Burlington Bay on one of the first truly glorious spring days of the year. Even though it was barely 60 degrees, all the teenagers in line ahead of me were wearing shorts. I ordered a black raspberry-maple twist in a cone, hoping I might better understand this inflexible dyad. The texture was life-affirming; the youth who dispensed it from the Taylor machine had cut no corners in the execution of a tight, neat stack; the flavor had the sweet nonspecificity of Froot Loops, which I love, it turns out, for approximately seven minutes.

But once those seven minutes had elapsed, I realized with horror that I couldn’t make myself stop eating, because then the smoke break would be over, and on the other side was my life. I felt nauseous for the rest of the day.

Al’s French Frys

1251 Williston Rd., South Burlington, 862-9203, alsfrenchfrys.com

I have had passable creemees at Al’s, which happens to be the only place one can get a creemee after 10 p.m. in the Burlington metro area. A couple of weeks ago, under $5 credit card-minimum duress, I ordered crumbled Heath Bar on top of my small maple. This turned out to be the lone edible thing about the creemee, which had the consistency of whipped frozen lard. Also, there was an air pocket. When I tossed it in the trash after maybe three spoonfuls, my Puritan ancestors whispered: “You could have used that to lube your bike chain.”

Little Gordo
Creemee Stand

71 S. Union St., Burlington, littlegordocreemeestand.com

Most vanilla creemees are mysterious vacuums of flavor. They are simply Cold Wet, tasting of nothing. There’s nothing wrong with this, if cold wet nothing is your thing. But for scolds like me who believe that flavor names shouldn’t be empty signifiers, vanilla creemees are a dereliction of language’s basic duty to mean something.

Little Gordo, the ice cream outpost of Taco Gordo known for such departures from the Vermont canon as horchata- and ube-flavored creemees, has found a canny work-around to the failures of “vanilla”: Sweet Creem, which suggests an appealingly decadent texture rather than a flavor. To get a Sweet Creem-chocolate twist on a recent Sunday afternoon, I had to stand in a long line of people, several of whom were wearing bucket hats. A calibrated playlist of psychedelic Afrobeat and garage rock wafted from the outdoor speakers, and I felt importuned: Couldn’t I just wait for a creemee without a soundtrack, even one that I happen to like? Music ruins the liminal aspect of the creemee experience that I hold sacred. Also, the line moved slowly.

My creemee, however, was good. The Sweet Creem was rich and slightly tangy, in keeping with the relentless hipster commitment to fermented-tasting stuff, and the chocolate actually tasted like chocolate. I wasn’t transformed. But I wasn’t dissatisfied.

The Sweet Spot

1 King St., Burlington, spotonthedock.com

I detected absolutely no difference between the black raspberry-maple twist I ordered here and the one I got at Burlington Bay, except that this one was slightly more expensive. I guess you go here if you’re at Perkins Pier and sudden selective amnesia sets in, causing you to forget that Burlington Bay exists a mere two blocks away? Anyway, it was fine.

A Hater’s Guide to Creemees: Non-Burlington Edition

No, I did not evaluate every creemee vendor in the state of Vermont, thank you for asking. But here are a few spots I do like.

Dairy Creme: The word “Creme” in the name tells you everything you need to know: This place is mercifully unpretentious, nor will it furnish you with the best-tasting creemee of your life. But transcendent flavor isn’t the point here. The carnival flags and decidedly unmanicured setting along the Winooski River give it a real entropic, anything-goes ambience. Come here if you like to feel as though you’re being slowly reclaimed by weeds.

320 State St., Montpelier, 223-1642, dairycreme.com

Palmer Lane Maple: Maple jingoism at its peak, but unassailably good. Once you’ve had this maple creemee, other maple creemees will turn to ash in your mouth. In this way, Palmer Lane will actually leave you sadder and emptier.

19 Old Pump Rd., Jericho, 899-8199, palmerlanemaple.mybigcommerce.com

Vermont Cookie Love: This place has near-perfect creemees — generous stacks, good heft, impeccable texture. And you can lounge in an Adirondack chair and listen to the 18-wheelers roaring by on Route 7, a welcome bit of hell that saves Cookie Love from its own cuteness.

6915 Route 7, North Ferrisburgh, 425-8181, vermontcookielove.com

The original print version of this article was headlined “A Hater’s Guide to the Burlington Creemee Scene | Who asked for this? You didn’t!”