Restaurant: Uncle Tetsu’s Matcha Cafe
Location: 596 Bay Street Toronto, ON M5G 1M5
Price Range: $
*Note: Cash only
[wp-review]
Just when you think the line up of Uncle Tetsu’s Japanese Cheescake store will die (check my review here), lo and behold, the owner opened a new store, Uncle Tetsu’s Japanese Matcha Cafe. This time the second shop is conveniently located next to the original, but as the name entails, the new bakery main focus is matcha (or green tea) based desserts.
For now the cafe only offer some of Tetsu’s other staple dessert, madeleine alongside green tea soft-serve and shaved ice. Unfortunately the cheesecake will only be available in August, so expect a 2 hours lineup around that time. In addition to matcha, some of the desserts will also be available in red bean versions, like the cheesecake and madeleines.
Similar to the original bakery, the madeleine are freshly made in front of your eyes. Behind the girl, there’s a door that connect to their next door shop as well.
The shop is quite small, but my main concern is where will they place the ovens to bake the matcha cheesecake? I doubt they will use the ovens in the next door bakery as they are still trying to control the production of the original cheesecake.
Some of the items, such as cheesecake and slushies are not available yet. I didn’t feel like trying the shaved ice that day as even the small portion was humongous, it can be easily shared between 2 people! Unfortunately the dessert with red beans weren’t available as well, it would be interesting to see what kind of red bean paste that they use, as there are slight differences in texture for red bean paste.
For $4, this soft cream (or soft serve) was definitely worth it as a lot of place tend to overprice any item that contains matcha. With that said, the soft serve was a slight disappointment, in my opinion it tastes like 90% vanilla and 10% green tea. I think even if I get the matcha flavored only, the matcha taste wouldn’t have been strong enough.
Furthermore, I found that within 2 minutes, the soft serve was already melting. Do note I was eating this in a 20 degrees weather with no sun out, so I don’t even want to imagine how fast the soft serve will melt when Toronto’s weather get to 30 degrees (which I doubt it will lol).
Uncle Tetsu’s bakery was having a buy 3 get 1 free promotion that day for the madeleines. Look at how cute the box is! Since they didn’t have the madeleine with red beans, I got the matcha only.
If you ask me which one I prefer between the original and matcha madeleine, I say pick the matcha! These madeleines have a nice crust, soft interior with a strong green tea flavor. I also appreciate that these had a nice balance of sweet and bitterness from the green tea, it would goes very well with a nice cup of latte :).
There wasn’t a long line for the cafe, but that will change once the bakery introduce the popular matcha cheesecake in August. I say pay a visit to the cafe now, as who know how long the wait will be in August? Am I going to wait 2 hours for the matcha cheesecake? Yes. I am still waiting for the angel hat cakes (can someone tell me when uncle tetsu will sell these), so I’m willing to line up 2 hours for those as well once they come out!
*Update*
So…. I bought the green tea cheese cake! However I didn’t buy this at the store itself, I actually was able to purchase the cake from Front Street Foods with 0 line up! I went back to the matcha cafe with my friend for some madedeine and surprisingly there were only 5 people in line, so I’m not sure if that’s the sign that the matcha cake is not as popular as the original…
The matcha cake was a bit smaller than the original one, and I believe the bakery don’t sell the plain green tea flavor on its own. In terms of texture, it is the same, soft and melt in your mouth. However there were bits of red bean at the bottom and I quite liked it. I know some people complained how the red beans were mushy but mine was not at all. In terms of flavor, I prefer the matcha cake more because it had a strong green tea taste and the cake was not sweet at all. With that said, the usual tangy cheese flavor that you would get in the original cheesecake is so subtle that you can barely taste it, so really, this shouldn’t be called a “cheesecake” at all…. In conclusion, good to try but not worth the long lineup at all (if you ever see one at the cafe).