RISE
Grilled Coffee Cake Muffin
Cakey McPancake – Chocolate Buttermilk Pancake, Bittersweet Chocolate Chips, Butter, Bobo’s Maple Syrup
Returning to Mystic for day four of a trek through New England it was on a rainy Sunday morning with Sift closed that Breakfast was ordered at RISE, their claim of “Breakfast + Lunch Elevated” potentially accurate for a sleepy seaside town propped up by tourism during the Summer but nothing more than an example of “Big Fish in a small pond” syndrome in general.
Located on Water Street downtown since August of 2016, a space near Hollywood-famous Mystic Pizza and Oyster Club plus most of the city’s shopping creating no shortage of foot traffic even during Winter, it was arriving just fifteen minutes after opening that RISE was already found to be bustling, a seat at the thin rail near the door offered and accepted with an invitation to pour one’s own Coffee ignored as a result of the Restaurant offering no artificial sweeteners.
Toqued by Melody Pere and featuring a small footprint with 8a-2p hours Tuesday through Sunday virtually guaranteeing a packed house and waits up to an hour, it was after ten minutes perusing a brief menu that the decision was made to order two plates, the “Seasonal” Stuffed French Toast inexplicably unavailable thus leading to an order of one Pastry plus a dish dedicated to the Chef’s father.
Promoting the use of “locally sourced, quality ingredients,” though little of the basic menu or weather indicates such as “Fresh Fruit,” Spinach and Tomatoes would all be hard-pressed to grow with ice on the ground, it was while unintentionally eavesdropping on nearby conversations that another fifteen minutes were waited, the line six deep less than a foot away mostly a fault of RISE’s size as the grilled Muffin and Stack of Dark Brown Pancakes arrived.
Apparently a nearby native and veteran of Oyster Club and Engine Room, Chef Pere’s idea with RISE largely to fill a niche with higher quality Food, it was with comments from onlookers about how good everything looked that first bites were taken of a fair-to-middling grilled Muffin gilded with Butter before moving on to “Cakey McPancake,” the fluffy stack largely flavored like a Brownie with Chocolate Chips dialing up texture that nonetheless became monotonous about five-bites in and thus would probably best be shared by groups of two or more.
www.risemysticct.com
