A cheesy concept that works wonders

Walk anywhere in George Town, the UNESCO-inscribed capital of Penang Island and State, and you’ll see gentrification has not only brought in way too many cafes, it has also standardised the experience into a very similar and formulaic cookie-cutter concept.

Started in 2011 by stalwart Chinahouse, that raggedy-chic concept with exposed brick walls and hanging light bulbs has been done so many times it now just irritates me.

It seems as if nobody else in Malaysia has an idea that somehow departs from that tested and successful, but oh-so-overdone concept.

That was when I bumped into Keju, yet another shophouse along George Town’s super-centric Campbell Street — once the street of Chinese goldsmiths — but with a different concept.

True enough, the outside formula is the same: shop on the ground floor of a two-storey Sino-Portuguese shophouse. But upstairs . . . there’s a bakery. Which, to be honest, is also not so original in a city that now has almost as many sourdough breads, cinnamon rolls, and croissants as there are Chinese bao and youtiao sticks for sale.

Keju (a name that in Malay simply means “cheese”) started making the same old bakery products, but ended up focusing on . . . well, cheese. It is new, opening on December 25, with doors open from 10am-8pm.

Mind you, Keju is a bakery, not a hipster cafe. Once you enter, the bakery-style counter is on the left-hand side, and to the right, there are only three tables to sit at and dig into the cheesecake.

Keju is definitely a bakery for orders on the go, but it can also be fine for a date — it won’t get too crowded, as there’s not enough seating space. The speciality and focus here is the mini cheesecakes. Imagine one that can fit on the palm of your hand, and there you have an idea of the selection of eight flavours, each costing as little as RM 6.50 ($2.40).

The first thing I try, of course, is the original. It’s a burnt cheesecake that, probably like this writer, is very sturdy and blackened on the surface, but hides a very soft heart. When I crack the shell and dig in, the cheese is buttery and comes out as if I had stabbed a living thing, bleeding creamy cheese right into my mouth — definitely an addictive problem for those with a sweet tooth.

I’m not a big fan of matcha, but Keju’s flavoured cheesecake will make its lovers very happy. The matcha mini-cheesecake is pungent, as if the flavour itself possessed the whole mini cake, to the point that the main ingredient, cheese, becomes overwhelmed by it. My favourite flavour is the dashi honey, for it’s the most buttery and fresh. Dashi is a Japanese food powder that is usually used to garnish soups, but the flavour here works in entirely different ways. And for lovers of Japan, Keju also makes a (delicious) seaweed cheesecake.

The other thing Keju specialises in is the cream cheeses in a tub — in other words, 100g of some sort of cheesy ice cream. The Lotus Biscoff taste is enhanced with gula melaka, a super-sweet Malaysian sugar, and features a compact cream that one must work to melt in the mouth with the tongue.

To me, it felt like an amped up biscuit flavour spiked with the zest of a cream cheesecake. Usually, Keju’s staff explain to me, these little tubs are bought together with bread rolls or croissants, and used as a spread. But if you want to feel the sugar burn your teeth, you can dig into these mini tubs with a spoon at the risk of passing out from high blood sugar levels.

In that way, the gula melaka and coconut flavour is very, very sweet, yet in a very seductive way: soft cream melting in the mouth, with the coconut taste making things all the more sweet and sticky to the palate. For those who are not into a lovely punch to the soul and gut, opt for another flavour.

My tub contained even more sugar at the bottom, so beware, and don’t mix. Alternatively, opt for the strawberry cream cheese flavour, which has a yoghurt-like taste that feels very fresh to eat.

One of the very finest things in life, especially to go with bone-corroding levels of sugar, is coffee — and that’s so easy to get all wrong in Penang, where baristas always pour in too much water, making a mess of my Italy-born tastebuds. Keju’s brew is proudly Indonesian, and after so much sugar, I really crave it.

I order a long black without any sugar, and for once, it comes out very much right.

The barista, Daniel, who previously worked at Black Kettle (another of George Town’s staple cafes), definitely knows what he’s doing and does not disappoint. Let me highlight this: Keju’s coffee tastes of beans, not water. It’s strong and black, not the watered-down filler that passes for “barista coffee” in many Penang cafes.

At Keju, you can come for the inventive twist on Penang desserts and enjoy zesty cheesecakes that ooze the stuff right into your oesophagus, but please don’t forget the coffee — I can still remember the aroma.