Review: Uncle Tetsu's Cheesecake, Penang

Penang's Summerton in Bayan Baru sure has plenty of big-hit food & beverages outlets. First it was Thai Hao Chi Boat Noodle Restaurant, then Beer Factory, this time it's Uncle Tetsu's Cheesecake. I have heard that they had a promotion selling the famous cheesecakes for RM1 only, but I missed the promotion. Even after the promotion is over, I still will always see a line of people queuing up in front of the shop during the weekends. Naturally I got curious; I decided to buy some during my Monday-off because I though surely there will be no line during a weekday and so I can buy more for my colleagues; I was wrong.

But, but, It's a Monday morning, why is there still a line?

 

The shop opens at 11am so I rode my bicycle and reached at 10:55am. A line was already forming outside the shop. The wait took 35 minuets.

It was nice of them to put a giant fan outside; the line was building up a lot of heat

The shop closes on Wednesdays, so heads up you guys.

 

 Hmmm, so an oven has 3 decks and each deck can make 12 cakes and each batch takes 1 hour(plus time to package). In a 10 hours they should be making 360 cakes per day. They only make 300 cakes per day so looks like production is 17% below optimum capacity. And if we consider the cost of one cake so we... opps look at the time, that killed 5mins of waiting.

Only one cake per person per time huh? So if I go line up again it'll take me 2 hours to get 4 cheesecakes. Or I can bring my still schooling cousins here and they all can get one order. That would increase my... opps look at the time, that killed another 5mins of waiting.

 

Oh yes! Air-cond!

 

So after the shop opened at 11am sharp. I finally was able to place an order of one, ONLY ONE, cheesecake at 11.35am. But the wait is not over, I needed to wait another 45mins for my cake to be ready!

 

 Hmm... no GST charged. I did not know Cheesecakes are essential items.

 

Finally at 12:10pm, I got my cake, so in total the time required to get a Uncle Tetsu's Cheesecake on a Monday morning was 1 hour and 20mins! So I zoomed my way back home to see what this cake is all about. After a few bites all I have to say was: "Meh".

It's like a spongecake infused with cheese. Fluffy but tasteless.

 

So my conclusion is: I don't see what the big fuzz is about. The cake is okay, not great, and definitely not worth the long wait. While munching on the cake, I asked myself 'who would queue up just for this?', but the answer was very obvious; it is people like me. Seeing so many people lining up made me think that the cake must be awesome enough to warrant such a response, also after going through so many hurdles just to get one cake, that made the cake seem all so precious.

But anyway, that's just me. If any of you think the cake is fantastic then good on you.