Cedele

Cedele is a chain. It has dine-​in restaurants, café-​bakeries and just bakeries. I like this one at Jelita, because it’s on the way home and it does what I need it to do without fuss and pretense, which is dispense one of my favorite sweets in the world, the caramel sea salt cheesecake. I generally don’t get very excited about anything that doesn’t have pork fat in it, so sweets are a bit of a hard sell with me.
This cheesecake is good. How good? Well, it has no alcohol or pork fat in it and I adore it. Ok, not an endorsement that should mean much to you, oh stranger, but just take my word as a fellow Unilocaler, that it’s worth my time and your calories. The caramel has a vestigial smokiness that is accentuated and rounded off by the sea salt. In that first fresh slice, this flavor tango comes off as almost umami! Weird, but good weird, like Kumar weird. Of course, this is a cheesecake after all and you get creamy and sweet and the graham crust is nice enough. But it’s that smoky-​salt-​sweet thing that gets me every time and keeps me coming back again and again to try and define the ethereal nature of this flavor étude. So beguiling. I’m almost thinking that an evil-​boss garnish for this cake would be crisped bacon bits sprinkled lightly on. To prove this hypothesis, I think I need to head out for more research material…