Cold creme brulee is here to stay

I've been frequently frustrated in recent years by the horror that
arrives at the table every time I order creme brulee in a restaurant,
and I get some half-frozen piece of shit that tastes like cold cream and
KY jelly. It's only served at fine restaurants, which means it's just
this awful capper to a great meal that makes me all pissed off about the
whole experience. I understand the problem of restaurants, because it
is a strange dish full of uncooked bacteria breeding ingredients with
just the top burned to a glaze immediately before serving, and they
needed to prepare it in advance but also be sure their creme brulee
wasn't going to kill their customers. Unfortunately for a while a lot
of restaurants had this insane idea they'd make it and torch it all at
the same time before throwing it in the subzero overnight. In such an
environment the staff invariably never eat the restaurant's food and
therefore have no problem bringing it out cold, which is a really
unpleasant surprise when you dig in and your spoon starts frosting over.

After many years of me asking pointed questions about the serving
temperature everywhere I saw it on the menu, I thought I might have
single-handedly started a regional creme brulee education process,
because it was at least coming out a bit warm. Unfortunately the new
thing seems to be to make it on Monday morning, freeze it, and then
Friday night take it out of the freezer, knock a few ice chunks off of
it, and then hope running a blowtorch over it for five seconds will make
it edible. When you inevitably hit that nasty cold spot in the
middle... it's like kissing a smoker, I shudder just to think of it.

From what I hear Luci Ancora was the last hold out on serving this dish
in a manner fit for a refined palette, by virtue of having a creme
brulee specialist on call. She would prepare a batch from the freshest
ingredients every morning and deliver it to the restaurant, who would
keep it mildly refrigerated (I like to keep my e coli farther down my
gut, so I don't object to this step) then torch their cool but not
frozen creme brulee immediately before serving. Hearing this, I was
really interested in getting over there to try the last properly
prepared creme brulee available outside l'Hexagon, but glancing in the
freezer case at my corner store, I fear I may be too late. Those
bastards Ben & Jerry are making creme brulee ice cream, and their
marketing department (who have clearly made a deal with the devil to
have stamped such a wholesome, homemade image on ice cream with gummi
bears in it with celebrity endorsements) which will convince the world
it's supposed to be cold and shitty, and they'll pound the table and cry
until they get their cold creme brulee (which also helps take off make-up).

I fear there will soon be none left, just like you can't get anybody to
soak the bread all the way through when they make french toast, and it
shows up all dry in the middle. And for the last time, french toast was
not invented by Lou French in a Brooklyn diner in 1957, nor was it
"invented" by anybody else, much like sliced bread was not the brainwave
of a courtier to a Plantagenet court by the name of Joseph Slicer, and
Plato did not invent the plate. The Captain told me that five years
ago, it still annoys the hell out of me, and no, I still won't stay at a
Red Roof Inn.