Before Pablo, the famous Japanese cheesecake specialist, hit stage at Robinsons Manila, a gooey avalanche of social media hype already had the brand running the loop for quite some time. Piqued by the brand’s stunning appeal and our own curiosity, we tried the “best cheesecake in the world” for ourselves, but walked away disappointed.
Naming it after the revolutionary painter, Pablo CEO Masamitsu Sakimoto, intended for it to create pastries fitting of revolutionary cuisine, masterpieces of desserts with a twist. Robinson’s Place Manila provides the Metro with a first taste of the pastry phenomenon. If you can make it pass the endless queues, the interior is as original as it can be, with ambiance very reminiscent of its flagship stores. Radiant yellow lights surround the store, evoking optimism and eagerness for visitors—only to unmask the brands ill-fitting advertisement: the world’s best cheesecake.
The Original Cheese Tart
The brand best-seller, its Original Cheese Tart, caused endless lines for the first-time buyers. The crispy (albeit sometimes stale) crust concealed a finely whisked yolk filling, finished off with a glossy glaze of apricot sauce. What looked like a delightfully curated pastry, ironically tasted disappointingly bland. The filling is not as gooey nor cheesy as the advert implied. If not for its zesty glaze, the tart would have been a lost cause. It is matched by a taste that’s all too familiar, though: perhaps the beloved Peach Mango Pie of Jollibee.
Looking forward to making your own? You could buy the following: Peach mango pie, some otap, and your local bakery’s cheese tart. Put them all in pretty packaging. This is a good substitute for less than Php 100 for this overpriced confectionery (Php 599). Honestly, it seems an excessive amount to pay for what it is, and how it tastes.
The Matcha Cheese Tart
The downside of this matcha tart variant, is ironically its flavor: it lacks the matcha taste. Knowing how matcha has a huge crowd following, the brand should have been more careful about how they arranged this particular variant.
The crust is nothing special like its original counterpart, retaining the same texture, akin to the usual buko pie crust. The filling though, with red bean paste and rice balls, is quite interesting, almost the saving grace. Although the advertised matcha filling does not make the cut for matcha aficionados, the mixture of elements proved to be more appetizing than the original one.
Just not enough
Reviews on Pablo Cheesetart Philippines’ Facebook page are telling of our woes. The overall average score came in at a mediocre 2.9, at least for customers here. A quick look reveals two polarizing opinions: love it or hate it with 83 people giving them five stars and 76 others one star.
It is worth nothing Pablo became a widespread success, first in Japan, a country known for its culinary excellence, then among our neighbors in the East, though. And nothing in Pablo seems accidental—not their carefully planned social media releases, nor their crafted brand identity, and definitely not their cheese tart recipes. But, was marketing the decidedly minimal taste to Filipinos a mistake? We like our food unbearably sweet, salty, and spicy, with some Ajinomoto, after-all.
Wherever it went wrong, the proof is in the pudding. For a pastry shop hyped to be the creators of the “world’s best cheesecake,” the two iconic flavors didn’t quite meet expectations and were rather lackluster, to say the least. From the ironically bland taste, to bouts of stale crust—a huge thumbs down. Because people need to hear the story’s flipside, it was necessary to bring this up.
