I’ve been travelling a lot lately, so my cheesecake notes have started piling up. Here are the best cheesecakes I tried in the last few weeks! :)
Abu Dhabi
WatchHouse, a London coffee brand, opened its Abu Dhabi café at The Arcades inside the Abu Dhabi Equestrian Club. The banana cheesecake is rich and generous. The texture is dense and smooth. The banana adds a mellow, ripe sweetness to the filling, a great twist.
@ Modern Coffee by WatchHouse, The Arcades - Banana cheesecake
Copenhagen
I visited 12 restaurants and coffee shops in Copenhagen last week, but none served a proper cheesecake!
Cheesecake isn’t really Danish, so I’m breaking the pattern here. No cheesecake review from Denmark this time, just two desserts I really liked instead.
#1 Cardamom bun at The Roe Bar
This was the best pastry I had in Copenhagen. The dough is soft and buttery, twisted into a knot with cardamom sugar baked into every fold. The Roe Bar is the café inside the Louise Roe gallery on Vognmagergade, and its pastries come from Juno the Bakery, which was founded by former Noma chef Emil Glaser. Juno definitely deserves some credit.
#2 Danish pastry with cheesy cream and fig at Hart Bageri
This was the closest I got to cheesecake on the whole trip: flaky layers, a lightly tangy cheese cream, and fig for sweetness. Richard Hart opened Hart in 2018 after working as head baker at Tartine in San Francisco and starting out in Noma’s kitchens. I’ve heard their cheesecake is really good (back in 2019, their almost-burnt Basque cheesecake drew crowds), but it’s not on the menu right now.
Florence
Osteria delle Tre Panche has used the same cheesecake recipe since 1986. It’s famous enough that when the restaurant ran a pop-up in New York in 2022, whole cheesecakes to take home were priced at $180.
The texture is soft and custardy, and the slice is much lighter than you’d expect from a cheesecake. It’s a dessert you can still say yes to after a plate of pasta. The dining room is beautiful, and even though it’s in the Centro Storico, steps from the Ponte Vecchio, it doesn’t feel touristy at all.
@ Osteria delle Tre Panche, Centro Storico - Cheesecake
Warsaw
Almost 2 years ago I wrote that Polish cheesecakes were boring: too creamy, not cheesy enough, and sometimes full of raisins. Koneser Grill was the exception, and its Basque cheesecake with honey and truffle ranked #4 on the Global Cheesecake Ranking in December 2024. It’s been my answer to “where’s the best cheesecake in Warsaw?” ever since.
Not anymore. Now, the best cheesecake in Warsaw is the Basque cheesecake at Warszawa Wschodnia, Mateusz Gessler’s restaurant in the old Soho Factory complex in Praga. (That’s the restaurant, not the train station.)
The top is deeply burnt and dark, with the slight bitterness that a proper Basque cheesecake should have. Underneath, the texture is perfect: creamy and smooth, but not too heavy. It comes with raspberries, and their bright, tart bite works beautifully with the cream.
Honestly, it’s just perfect. This is my new favourite in Warsaw.
@ Warszawa Wschodnia by Mateusz Gessler, Soho Factory - Basque cheesecake
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