Chef Jordi Roca opens Rambolesc

I am a tender-serve fanatic, possessing developed up in Vermont, where by the tradition of what we call “Cree-Mees” runs deep and seasonal. As an grownup, I can’t help chasing soft-provide anywhere I vacation, from Kyoto to Barcelona — wherever I had my first intriguing style of Rocambolesc.

The shop there is a great glass corner sliver on La Rambla, the famous pedestrian street working past the Gothic Quarter. I popped in to attempt a cupful of coconut-and-violet sorbet 1 night, and the mixture haunted me. So the next evening I decided to try out the easy chocolate cone, which twisted skyward like a single of Gaudi’s turrets at the close by Palau Güell.

Superior things. So I was gleeful to hear that Jordi Roca would open the 1st Rocambolesc outside of Spain in Houston. It is only the fifth these types of retail outlet anywhere. There are two outlets in Madrid and two in Girona, exactly where Roca brothers — Jordi, Joan and Josep — run their superior-flying restaurant El Celler de Can Roca. The fantastic-eating Mecca has two times acquired the range 1 location on the World’s 50 Best Places to eat list.

It designed sense that Catalan chef Luis Roger and his business enterprise lover Ignacio Torras, of BCN and MAD listed here, have been guiding the Houston task. Equally are Barcelona natives, and with the opening of their MAD cafe in the River Oaks District, they conjured a jolt of the identical Spanish modernism that animates the Roca brothers’ cuisine.

The Houston Rocambolesc sits concerning the eating places Songkran and Etoile, throughout the plaza from Hugo Ortega’s Urbe. It’s significantly more substantial than the Barcelona shop, with indoor seating fairly than strictly in-and-out counter assistance, in addition a sleekly furnished patio.

But I acknowledged the icy-white neon lettering and the whimsical sweet cane striping. They’re established in an eye-popping 3-dimensional grid and fronted by counters clad in stripes and checkerboard designs.

A distinct bubble dome at a single conclusion creates the impossibly filmy cotton sweet that graces some of the elaborately composed ice product cups for which the shop is known, the uncommon dwelling-created toppings matched with seasonal flavors. Consider baked-apple gelato with caramelized apple, baked apple and butter cookies lower in oversize cubes or make-your-have confections topped with effervescent lime rocks, small candy stars, or hunks of guava jam.

You can get the smooth-serve gelato and sorbetto in a straightforward cornet, or cone or as a cornet with toppings.

Jordi Roca himself was in city for employees training when I popped by for a peek very last week. I obtained a look inside the freezer circumstance that retains the brand’s fanciful frozen pops — the most well known of which is a reproduction of the majestic Roca household nose. I spotted the bars shaped like tiered birthday cakes, which appear in a milk chocolate and spiced tea version, or a raspberry, white chocolate and yogurt taste.

I created a psychological notice to provide a little handbag-sizing cooler with me when I pay a visit to, and wondered no matter whether the Houston store would inventory the deep-dim blueberry sorbetto pops molded in the condition of a helmeted Darth Vader. Not to point out the surrealist pop recognised as “Columbus’ finger.” There’s a Dada streak worthy of Catalan artist Salvador Dali in some of the Rocambolesc confections.

I’m keen to see what flavors and toppings the shop will open with. And I’m hoping to attempt 1 of the famous panets, a hot-and-chilly ice product sandwich that seals buttery brioche dough about gentle gelato or sorbetto.

I want to see the dazzling red gears and pulleys on the store wall spring into mechanized action, also and to see my fellow Houstonians rocking in the dazzling round swings that grace the patio. Almost everything about this new dessert shop appears like entertaining.

alison.cook dinner@houstonchronicle.com