ottawa foodies

I find baked goods at T&A are hit and miss but the lemon cheesecake is one of the best I've had (other than my mom-in-law's amazing cheesecake). Normally I stick to plain cheesecakes with just some fresh fruit and whipping cream on top and stay away from the "flavoured" cheesecakes, but the lemon curd on top of this cheesecake really works.

We opted for two cheesecakes each, which was a great quantity for post-dinner tasting. A person could easily motor through half a dozen as a large snack.

The quality is indeed high. I'm a picky purist when it comes to cheesecake so I usually don't order it in restaurants. But these were really quite good.

I found the seasonal (October?) "Pumpkin Spice and Gingerbread with Toasted Marshmallow" (foreground right) to be particularly tasty. Fun!

really loved the mini cheesecakes here. they are clearly crafted with care. these could put the nail in the coffin on the Ottawa cupcake trend! standouts were the salted caramel and lemon meringue. will definitely try the savourys next time.

while i didn't include anything for scale, each cheesecake is quite small. think one to two bites ie. hors d'oeuvre size. i would consider a 1/2 dozen a reasonable dessert portion of cheesecake. just order the dozen already and split with a dining companion.

the token (pog?) system of ordering these also worked quite well...

Stopped in later last night for cheesecake. They had a dozen flavours. 8 sweet and 4 savoury. We decided in the interest of research to order a dozen. We sampled all of the sweet and 1 of the savoury.

The cheesecakes are petite, think 2 bite size. The standouts were:

Double smoked bacon with orange. Good flavour of the cream cheese in the filling. I liked the orange and the bacon flavour combo.

Classic NY chocolate: great chocolate flavour, deep rich, with a surprise coffee bean in the middle.

Lemon meringue: tasted just like a lemon meingue pie.

Chocolate salted caramel: I'm not a chocolate fan normally, but this could convert me. Deep cocoa flavour with a of sprinkling of salt.

Classic NY with dark cherry: I could have eaten a dozen of these ones. Graham cracker crust, but just a thin layer. Sweet and tart at the same time.

None of the flavours were overly sweet, you get the flavour of the cream cheese, smooth, silky texture. What cheese cake should be.

My only criticism - The bacon was set on top of the cheesecake, so the pieces fell off before I could get it to my mouth. Perhaps a way to anchor it to the cheese cake.

All in all a great 1st visit and I'll be back to sample the rest of the menu.

edited to add: Everyone from the front counter staff to the runners were very friendly

Oh, yum!

Mentioning that I was going here got a recommendation to try the cheesecake. For, it turned out, good reason -- smooth and creamy and perfect, I thought.

An excellent selection of home-style personal-sized cheesecakes, guaranteed to please even the most discerning palate.

This is a delicious slice of cheesecake.
I believe it's vanilla bean cheesecake with coffee creme anglaise or something like that (don't quote me on it). Our server suggested we try it with their homemade butterscotch sauce and brought us a little dish of it to pour on. Heaven!

Please do Mousse - the cheesecake had a noticeable vanilla extract taste to it, from what I remember (from GCNY Deli, not the Green Valley).

This looks exactly like the kind of cheesecake we used to make at the Green Valley. I can post the recipe in the wiki if anyone is interested.

I had one of those to go last week. Me and my girl friend fed for two days off it!!

haha, looks great!

WOW. That is one seriously huge piece of cheesecake.

That other picture doesn't do justice to the size of the cheesecake slice so I'm including this one for scale. Apologies for my psycho grin -- that's a lot of cheese for one photo!

We asked our server for dessert recommendations and the cheesecake was one of her two suggestions. At $8.95 this looks like an expensive piece of cake -- until you see the size of it! We shared it and practically had to roll ourselves out of the restaurant.

I have to say that this is certainly the best restaurant cheesecake I've encountered. It's the only one that comes close to my all-time favourite recipe (wiki.ottawafoodies.com). One interesting thing is that it has a crust of actual pie pastry. If you like good cheesecake, you could come here and have a slice with a cup of coffee and call it a meal. ;-)

The Japanese Cheesecake ($3.50 for a slice) is light and milky. This would be a nice accompaniment to a hot beverage!