The famous Uncle Tetsu’s Japanese Cheesecakes opened in Regent Place this Winter to massive hype – and the queues that go hand in hand with hype. There’s currently only 2 items available, the signature Japanese Cheesecake, and madeleines!
There’s a strict 1 cheesecake per customer rule at the moment, which helps move the line faster. If you line up at the very back of a full line, you can expect to have a cheesecake within about 25 minutes. What helps is the efficient and productive set up in the kitchen. The cakes take 45 minutes to bake and there are 12 ovens (3 of which are double the size of the rest, so it’s more like 15 ovens) baking round the clock to deliver hot, fresh cheesecakes. This is one of the highlights of the Uncle Tetsu brand – according to the Uncle himself – the fact that these cakes can be bought while still hot, or be guaranteed to have just come directly out of the oven. These cheesecakes are churned out right in front of your eyes, you don’t need a guarantee because you can see it being done!
Another reason people are willing to line up for just one cake is Uncle Tetsu himself. He’s charismatic, charming, and loves karaoke. We got a chance to ask him a few questions during a rare moment when he had time to sit down with us.
On the topic of opening in Australia, he says it’s been his dream destination for 42 years, since his very first trip here. It’s fascinating to talk to him, as he describes a world completely foreign to today’s generation. It took 21 days travelling by ship, and he only had a 9 day visa but loved Australia so much he stayed in Tasmania for 4 months until he was told he needed to go home. While he was at university (studying English literature) he was a champion Rumba dancer, captain of the social dance club, published a book and opened his first restaurant – an izakaya. In just 5 years, he opened 15 restaurants with a range of specialties like Chinese, Spanish, and live music bars. The reason for such rapid expansion was simple. What’s stopping you in the height of youth? With the motto “for young people, by young people”, Uncle Tetsu wanted to take over a section of town and turn it into the newest neighbourhood for young people to visit and hang out.
One of the stores he opened was called Hanajamu. The name comes from 花 hana and ジャム jam, inspired by his days of publishing a book where all the contributing authors picked pen names after flowers (hana) and jam as in jam sessions in live music. Hanajamu was more special than the other stores though. It was a bakery, and it was also where the Uncle Tetsu’s famous cheesecake was developed. Even more special is that both Uncle Tetsu’s mum and dad were both bakers and they owned a bakery where Uncle Tetsu grew up (before he was an uncle of course).
He recalls his first baking experience at 5 years old, where he made cookies so that he could be helpful and see his busy parents more. Playing by himself in local parks wasn’t too appealing, so he decided to learn to cook so that he could help out in the bakery and spend more time with mum and dad. Hanajamu was an extension of his earliest cooking skills, and it wasn’t too long after that Uncle Tetsu’s Japanese Cheesecake was born. It’s now global, with stores all over Asia, as well as America, Canada, and now Australia.
The kitchen of Uncle Tetsu’s works like clockwork. Large blocks of butter and cream cheese are cut up and weighed, eggs come already separated into whites and yolks, and milk is measured out perfectly for each batch of cakes. The egg whites and sugar are mixed first by machine, then transferred to a different part of the kitchen where they’re then mixed by hand to ensure the fluffiness is just right. They’re baked, then stamped with the Uncle Tetsu logo using a hot iron before being boxed up and handed right to the next person in line while still hot!
The glass walls allow you to see all of this happening all day, and we recommend you check out the work that goes into each cake. On top of that, we can also recommend that the cake is best eaten within 6 hours if you’re eating it fresh, or if you’re putting it in the fridge, it’s at optimum taste for about 3 days. Of course you can still eat it after that, but the quality will start to decline due to a lack of preservatives and the fresh nature of the cake. The only ingredients in the cake are eggs, flour, butter, cream cheese, milk, and a small amount of sugar.
If you eat it hot, it has a different taste and texture to eating it cold! While hot, it’s much more spongey and has a stronger egg taste. After putting it in the fridge, the cheesecake becomes more dense, but the cream cheese which is very subtle when hot comes out much stronger for a more cheesey taste.
After 42 years, Uncle Tetsu’s dream location is finally open in Australia. And we have some special news to share with you. Uncle Tetsu’s is expanding! You can expect the Sydney location to get even larger, opening in early November 2016, and a Melbourne location to come in the near future. More cheesecake flavours are coming! Think matcha, matcha with red bean, the number one selling honey cheesecake, and more. There’s also more menu items coming – think Japanese parfait (japarfeit!) and puddings, as well as the Angel Hat cake which has been described like eating delicious bubbles and custard filled. For a taster, you can check out Uncle Tetsu’s Angel Cafe, Toronto, it’s a similar concept and many of the same ideas will be getting used in the new Sydney expansion.
You can visit Uncle Tetsu at 501 George Street, Sydney.
WashokuLovers
