Japanese Cheese Tarts? Sounds Grate!
- Janie Phan
- Dec 14, 2017
- 3 min read
Review: Pablo Cheese Tart
Location: 114 Dundas St W, Toronto, ON M5G 1C3
Website: Pablo Cheese Tart Canada
Quick Background:
Pablo Cheese Tart is a Japanese based café known for its signature custardy cheese tarts. In addition to the pastries, the café sells coffee, smoothies, and sundaes. Pablo founder, Masamitsu Sakimoto, had a goal set out to create a cheesecake that can be served with different textures. In Japan, its not uncommon for desserts to not only taste good, but that there should also be an element of surprise (whether in appearance and/or texture). And thus, Pablo cheese tart was born!
Source: Official Pablo YouTube
What’s the hype?
The famous cheese tart shop from Japan has just arrived in Toronto and it’s got a line up that stretches out on to Dundas Street, a less than five-minute walk from Yonge-Dundas Square. It’s dubbed, “the cheesecake that has never been seen before” and it’s pretty much a local favourite in Japan. Also, did I forget to mention it has cheese in it? It practically sells itself!
Review:
When it was announced that Pablo Cheese Tart was coming Toronto, almost every Torontonian turned their head. Not just because a popular dessert café from Japan was coming to the 6ix, but it was because another popular dessert café from Japan has found its way here. By that, I mean Uncle Tetsu, another popular Japanese cheesecake café was already well positioned in the city and nothing stirs the pot more than a competitor coming into the scene.
Key differences: Uncle Tetsu positions itself more as a revamped version of a cheesecake – jiggly, soft, melts in your mouth minus the biscuit that everyone likes, whereas Pablo, has a cheesier, melt-y, eggy inside with a crunchy, pie crust situation going on.
Back to the review, on opening day and even throughout the first few weeks of opening, the line up wait times to get a tart was set at hours – 2 hours even. As the hype slowed down, wait times were reduced to around 5-10 minutes a person. The day I went was a weeknight and was fortunate enough to have no wait time (mind you, it was a really gross, rainy/snow-on-the-ground kind of day). Being a café, Pablo has a dine-in area and a take-out menu where once again, waiting times may vary depending on whether or not you want a seat. I opted for take-out because it’s a weeknight and *your girl* has to get home and do her PR homework.
Because Pablo’s makes their tarts and pastries daily, often times, if you stop by in the evening or at night, certain pastries or flavours would be sold out and that was the case for me. I opted to try their large signature baked cheese tart, available in original, matcha/green tea or chocolate. It is also available in either large ($14.99) or mini ($3.99). The price of the tart was also dependent on the chosen flavour. It is also important for me to note that this place does not accept credit card, so please do only show up to this place if you have cash or debit!
Having just eating dinner and stopping by here for dessert, I ended up deciding to take the tart home to eat. It is important to note that I live approximately an hour away from the downtown core, and so by the time I got home, this tart should have been anything but warm. I expected the crunchy crust to be soggy from all the condensation, but was instead, pleasantly surprised by how crunchy it still was! The middle part, the cheesy, egg-y part, was still warm as well. And now I know what your thinking, cheese and egg? Shut the front door, that sounds gross! I know, I thought so too, but this was light and fluffy and different – in a good way, like a cheesecake 2.0.
Verdict: I would definitely come back and try the same or different flavour and would definitely recommend this place to a friend.
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