The Not-So Cheesecake
Since my grandmother used to make them for me from scratch when I was a kid, I’ve been addicted to cheesecake. Fortunately, it’s not too difficult to find good cheesecake in Seoul. By the slice, several restaurants offer it on the dessert menu. Outback has, IMO, the best (much better than Bennigan’s). But if you want to buy a whole cheesecake and take it home, you have to know where to go.
Korean bakeries often sell cheesecake, but if you’re as big a fan as I am you will be disappointed by what you find even in the big bakery chains. The best places to go are usually the bakeries at Western hotels. I highly recommend the Westin Chosun bakery for anyone looking to get their cheesecake fix.
One thing I don’t normally see is cherry cheesecake. The Hilton Hotel bakery sells a cheesecake topped with fresh strawberries, but I love cherry pie filling when it’s spread on top. So I was quite happy to see a cherry cheesecake sitting in the display case of the bakery operated by the Intercontinental Hotel in the Coex mall. You can find this bakery in the basement of the hotel, between the hotel’s duty free shops and the Coex aquarium just beyond the mall entrance. But before you head out to get that yummy cherry cheesecake, you need to be aware that it isn’t really a cheesecake.
To be clear, I saw three cakes labeled as cheesecake. One was “Cherry Cheesecake”, another was “American Cheesecake”, and I don’t recall what the third was. I asked the clerk for the cherry cheesecake, waited while she boxed it up, then headed on home. When I cut into it after dinner, I was surprised to find myself staring at two layers of cake bread. My wife immediately called the bakery to inform them that they had given me the wrong cake. They assured us that they hadn’t. When she described what was in front of us, the bakery clerk explained.
It seems that if you want a real cheesecake from the Intercontinental bakery, you need to buy the one labeled American Cheesecake, which has no topping. The Cherry Cheesecake is a regular cake that is layered with a cream-cheese-based cream (which, having tasted it, is nothing like cheesecake) and topped with cherry pie filling. On the outside, it looks like a cheesecake. I explained to them that native English speakers who come to the bakery, and many of them do given that it’s the Intercontinental, will probably be confused by this. They didn’t seem to believe me.
So if you are in the same boat, walking by the Intercontinental Coex Bakery and see this nice looking Cherry Cheesecake, remember what I’ve written here. It’s not really cheesecake. Actually, you’re better off going to Costco and getting a frozen cheesecake from them. They usually have two kinds, a plain cheesecake from Kraft and a slightly more expensive one (can’t remember the brand) that comes with three or four slices each of four different flavors. Both are cheaper than what you’ll find in any of the hotel bakeries. And even though they’re frozen, they’re really, really good.