[Japanese] Uncle Tetsu’s Cheese Cake

Restaurant: Uncle Tetsu’s Cheese Cake 
Location: 598 Bay Street Toronto, ON M5G 1M5
Price Range: $
*Note: Cash only for now

[wp-review]

Uncle Tetsu is a Japanese bakery that specializes in Japanese cheesecake, a fluffier and less sweet version of the traditional New York cheesecake. This Toronto location is the first North American location for the company, and to be honest I never heard of this brand before as they only had locations in Asia. The bakery is conveniently located on Bay and Dundas (across from Atrium) and it can be easily found by a giant 2 hours line up right outside the store. Yes, you heard it right, 2 HOURS. Take note that after you line up outside, you still have to wait 30-45 minutes inside the store. Hopefully the lines will get shorter over time, but it’s almost been a month since its opening and the line doesn’t seem to get better… In addition, because of the high demand, each customer can only purchase one cheesecake per person.

As you can see, the bakery is tiny and there are no tables so you won’t be able to eat inside the store. Also, the store only accepts cash for now, hopefully it will accept other type of payments in the future. The bakery has an open concept so you can see the entire baking process. So far they only have 3 ovens, and they are all dedicated to bake the original cheesecake.

Right now Uncle Tetsu only offers the Original Cheesecake and Madeleine cookies. I’m really interested in the Angel Hat, and from the website, they also offer different flavors of the Angel Hat so I hope they will make those soon!! 😀

Please note that the bakery has a really high quality standard of their baked goods. I have seen the bakers throw 3-4 cheesecakes away because they cracked, but because of their high standard, I was disappointed of how my cake turned out… You will see why shortly.

After baking, all the cheesecake are stamped with the logos (the owner REALLY looks like the logos LOL it’s pretty cute :D).

For $10 this cake can probably fed 2-4 person, so it’s really cheap! Unfortunately mine didn’t have a nice golden brown color on top 🙁 couldn’t take an instagram-worthy picture LOL.

As you can see, Japanese cheesecake is more like a sponge cake, less sweet and just a hint of cheese. Also, the inside is smooth, creamy and very fluffy. With that said, I believe mine was under-cooked as the inside texture of the cake was really wet…. I let 4 other people tried this and they all said it was too wet… It would have tasted better if the cake was let to cook a bit longer in the oven until it had a light golden brown crust on top :(.

The Madeleine cookies were $2.22 each and they had a buy 3 get 1 free promotion that day. These were shaped differently compared to the traditional French Madeleine and I highly recommend it! Again not too sweet, baked perfectly and these go really well with a nice cup of coffee or tea :). I wish they would have had different flavors of the Madeleine though, like chocolate or lemon would be a nice addition :).

Anddddd that concludes my review of Uncle Tetsu’s Japanese Cheesecake! In my opinion it is not worth it to wait 2 hours for these cakes. There are a lot of recipes floating around on the internet on how to bake these, so if you have a baker friend, use them. I would definitely come back for the Angel Hat, but only when the lines die down.