Clementine’s wins more awards, owners to appear on "Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen" TV show

On the heels of a recent inclusion on Oprah Winfrey’s coveted "The O List," St. Louis' only microcreamery continues its meteoric rise.

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The past 12 months have been a nonstop series of awards and accolades for Tamara Keefe, founder of Clementine’s Naughty and Nice Creamery. Capping off what became a whirlwind year, on Tuesday, she and husband and co-owner, Frank Uible, will appear as guest bartenders on Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen on Bravo.

The interactive late-night series, hosted by St. Louis native Andy Cohen, welcomes mainstream celebrities as well as “Bravolebrities.” A guest bartender is always part of the lineup. (Former Blues player Pat Maroon made an appearance last week.) 

So what will Keefe and Uible be mixing up for Cohen and guests? Boozy ice cream drinks, perhaps, featuring the creamery’s “naughty” flavors, which include alcohol.

Clementine’s, now four years old, started to rack up significant awards beginning this time last year, when it won two major awards from the National Ice Cream Retailers Association, including Best New Flavor in the non-dairy category for Chocolate Coconut Fudge, a vegan-but-you’d-never-know-it dark chocolate infused with coconut milk, and the First Place Award of Excellence for its Madagascar Vanilla, a perennial bestseller.

In May, Clementine’s swept two of the three possible awards at The Specialty Food Association’s Sofi Awards, including the Silver Sofi for its Gooey Butter Cake ice cream and the Bronze Sofi for its Salted Crack Caramel flavor). It marked the first time it’s happened in the 47-year history of the competition.

A few weeks later, Keefe and Uible opened Clementine’s third location, on Macklind in the Southampton neighborhood, reintroducing the popular Blue Moon flavor just in time for the Stanley Cup finals.

In late September, the city welcomed the opening of Union Station's Soda Fountain, which exclusively uses Clementine’s ice creams. (On its first weekend, it burned through what Keefe thought would be a 30-day supply of ice cream and then broke that record on Saturday and again on Sunday.)

A few weeks later, O, The Oprah Magazine proclaimed the now-signature Gooey Butter Cake flavor the "Sexiest Ice Cream Alive" and included the creamery in the magazine's exclusive “The O List” for November.

"When their team told me there is no better product validation than being on The O List, of course I was honored," Keefe says, "but when I heard their entire Weight Watchers team went off the rails to taste it, that comment really sunk in."

Now comes news that at this year's National Ice Cream Retailers Association convention and trade show, in a peer-judged, blind taste test of 600 boutique ice cream makers, Clementine's received the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place awards for Best New Flavors—an unprecedented feat—for its Gooey Butter Cake, Italian Butter Cookie, and Salted Crack Caramel flavors, respectively. (Vegan Lemon Poppyseed won 2nd place for Best Vegan Flavor, and Midnight Pleasures took second 2nd for Best Chocolate Flavor.)

"It was all so overwhelming," Keefe says of being on the same stage with hundreds of the nation's best artisan ice cream makers. "I keep asking myself, "How much better can it get?" and then it does."

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