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Number 68: Crème Brûlée from Sweet. The period is intentional ― Sweet. As if owner Rob Waddell sought to make the city's definitive street-food crème brûlée, which he has. Waddell began hawking his carefully assembled custards ― baked in four-ounce Ball jelly jars ― at the San Rafael Farmers' Market last July. For a little over a month, he's been selling at the Sunday Stonestown market (he no longer does San Rafael, but shows up Wednesdays in Corte Madera). A former recipe developer, Waddell brings a technician's diligence to his short line of custards ($5 each), and it shows: at a cool room temperature, his vanilla custard has the weight and smoothness of softened butter. (Velvety texture is what Sweet. does best: Precisely because it aimed to be as fudgy as its namesake, the flavor Waddell calls Flourless Chocolate Cake seemed overly heavy.) Ask Waddell to brûlée any flavor, and it takes four or five applications of pale-beige organic sugar, each torch-blasted to glassy amber. The resulting crust is as thin and brittle as birdbath ice in a San Francisco backyard. And Waddell is fussy about more than sugar: Organic Valley dairy, Judy's eggs, Blue Bottle beans to flavor the delicate coffee custard. Though you might find yourself devouring them in a mall parking lot, Sweet.'s custards are seriously indoors-worthy. Sweet. At the Sunday Stonestown Farmers' Market, 3251 20th Ave. (at Buckingham Way), 9 a.m.-1 p.m. and Wednesday Corte Madera Farmers' Market, 301 Town Center (Madera at Tamalpais), noon-5 p.m.
