LeTAO - The Wonderful Marriage of Two Forms of Cheesecakes

Double Formage: mousse cheesecake decked on top of baked cheesecake, à la New York cheesecakes. Who would have thought that this combination works beautifully, and Le TAO happens to be one of the few places to let us discover this.

First thing first, when purchasing the cheesecakes, you will be asked on your choice between chilled and frozen. If you intend to tuck into it within the day and you will not lugging the cheesecakes around under the hot Singapore sun for hours, go for chilled one. Because the frozen one takes hours to defrost, and I can tell you that even after waiting for hours, the cake spots the consistency of a ice-cream. There are recommendations on letting the ice cream warm up a bit for few minutes after taking it out of the freezer in order to enjoy the unadulterated flavours of the dessert. The same goes for Le TAO's cheesecake. The true flavours of the cake are trapped in the coldness, resulting in a somewhat nice cheesecake.

But when biting into the cake that is thoroughly defrost, there is world of difference in the taste. The mild yet distinctive taste of mascarpone is what "delighting the taste buds with subtlety" is all about. And the baked cheesecake part, made with cream cheese, is slightly salty and features stronger flavours of cheese, complements the mousse cake so well—adding that little extra punch to the overall taste and accentuating the flavour of mascarpone cheese. The combination of these two forms of cheesecakes makes for the perfect texture. Imagine baked cheesecake slathered with a thick slab of delicious cream. Sounds better than the plain old cheesecake, right? The double formage is kind of like this, except that the cream on top is creamier and firmer in this case, thus blurring the distinction between the two layers of cakes and creating the harmonious union of the two.

As for the limited edition formage berry, the tart taste of strawberries added an extra zest to the cake, so I prefer this from "the need to have dimensional taste" point of view. But at the same time, the strawberries muted the delicate flavours of the mascarpone cheese.

From the angle of letting all ingredients shine, the original cake is better. After trying the cakes many times, my conclusion is that I prefer the original one since the addition of mascarpone cheese is for us to enjoy its unique taste. I can pick up other strawberry desserts instead if I want desserts with that extra kick.

So is it the best cheesecake as a lot had claimed? Yes, if I am not taking artisanal cheesecakes into account. Though artisanal desserts are for those really special occasions. For casual indulgence, Le TAO's cakes are good enough for me.

My Thoughts: Yummy!

Nearest car park: ION Orchard's car park
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#B1-K7, ION Orchard
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Singapore

BAKE Cheese Tart - A Puff of Cheese Goodness

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Usually I don't queue to try out any food. But since I love Hakodate Cheesecake from Hokkaido, and BAKE cheese tarts happen to have Hakodate cream cheese as one of their ingredients, I decided to take the plunge and check out the famed cheese tarts. I had waited for thirty minutes, which is my limit and is not that bad as compared to those two hours queue or even three.

Talking about the cheese filling first, when I bite into the cheese mousse, I feel like I am savouring a light puff of cloud saturated with the goodness of cheese. It is far lighter than the cream based mousse in mousse cakes. The taste of the blend of Japanese and French cheeses is subtle and milky yet distinct and exotic. The addictive taste plus the uniqueness of the texture and flavour make it worthwhile to try at least once.

The bowl of the buttery pastry shell has soft, crumbly texture that goes perfectly well with the incredibly light mousse. But the rim of the shell is harder, which hardly meshes well with the mousse. Though I find that munching on the rim is akin to eating a sweet butter cookie, not a bad start as a prelude to chomping the cheese tart down in a few bites. So my suggestion is to nibble up the entire rim, then move on to eat the mousse with the rest of the pastry shell.

So is it worth the wait? For thirty minutes, quite. For more than an hour, not really. While I like the taste of the mousse, I find the feelings of eating it to be fleeting and transient. It does not induce that solid, filling type of feelings that I want when tucking into any kinds of food. For a quick thrill, it is a great bite to indulge in.

My Thoughts: Sweet Bliss!

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