Having gone on a cheesecake round during the early days of this column, we felt it was high time we did a repeat round including new places. Though it is a dessert almost all of the coffee shops and restaurants tend to have, a perfect cheesecake is hard to come across. We took to four places hoping to find such a cheesecake. Mitsi’s had the best cheesecake either of us have tasted in a long time – it was all kinds of perfect! It comes highly recommended by the column, and if you happen to be a cheesecake fan, we doubt your love for this dessert if you haven’t tried what we consider to be heavenly!

Delifrance at Odel and Sponge served decent ones, though we felt slightly let down by Sponge, a favourite patisserie, as we may choose not to have it again there for reasons put down in the ratings section. BARS was the biggest pity. You will know why as you read on – one expects so much from any kind of a passion-based dessert, and the passion cheesecake we had here did not do justice whatsoever. Let us know what you think, where do you like your cheesecake best?

Blueberry Cheesecake - Mitsi’s Coffee Shop (34A, Bagatalle Road, Colombo 03)

Price - Rs.450nett
Value for money - high
Taste - *****
Variety - Also available on the dessert shelf are the double cheesecake and the double chocolate cheesecake.
Overall - It was tough finding other cheesecakes on the rest of our hunt, which would match up to how excellent this one single piece was. Baked to perfection with a gooey blueberry topping, it was slightly cold with a perfect sweet biscuit base. One spoonful of cheesecake is a melt-in-your-mouth affair and just might be the best cheesecake around in coffee shops situated in and around Colombo. Kudos to Mitsi and her team!

Blueberry Cheesecake - Sponge (347, Galle Road, Colombo 03)

Price - Rs.230nett
Value for money - average
Taste - ***
Variety - Sponge also serves raspberry cheesecake.
Overall - A little gelatinous for our liking but got used to the soft, cold, creamy texture of this unbaked cheesecake. We weren’t too crazy about the blueberry topping (if you could even call it that) owing to its jelly-like texture. The base however was delicious and sweet.

Blueberry Cheesecake - Delifrance at Odel (5, Alexandra Place, Colombo 07)

Price - Rs.380+ service charge and taxes (this amounted to Rs.400)
Value for money - average
Taste - 3 and a half stars
Variety - None
Overall - Again, this was extremely gelatinous but something about this cheesecake kept us reaching for more spoonfuls and we thought this might be because of the amazing cookie base (complete with chocolate chips), a first amongst any type of cheesecake we’d ever eaten here. It was cold, delicious and we can ignore the gelatinous texture of the Delifrance cheesecake just because the base was so good.

Passion Fruit Cheesecake - BARS Café (24, Deal Place, Colombo 03)

Price - Rs.300nett
Value for money - low
Taste - *  
Variety - Also on the dessert shelf was the regular baked cheesecake with glazed halved strawberries on top, and a cold cheesecake. We were informed that they do serve a blueberry variety also, but it was unavailable on the Tuesday that we visited the café.
Overall - Firstly, the cheesecake was hard, and it felt like we were digging our forks into a stubborn dessert. Secondly, it tasted very weird and not subtly sweet like a regular baked cheesecake. Thirdly, the passion fruit placed on top was just like eating passion fruit jelly. A jelly layer and baked cheesecake is just wrong, and it just doesn’t go. From our past experience with the regular baked cheesecake with glazed halved strawberries on top, we’d say that that actually tasted very good and well worth the Rs.300 spent, but we are incredibly wary of this supposed passion fruit variety.

By Nivedha Jeyaseelan and Sarah Kellapatha