LeTAO's Championship Double-Layer Cheese Cake – The Most Dreamy Delight Tasted by Food Critic Guo Renrong

Photos & Text /Guo Renrong

Cheese cake and afternoon tea lovers, rejoice~ Because my all-time favorite Japanese Hokkaido Otaru-local super-popular cheese cake, LeTAO, is finally entering the Taiwanese market!!!

Do you know what LeTAO means? It looks quite French, doesn’t it?! NONONO!! Actually, it’s the Japanese pronunciation of Otaru spelled backwards, with the RU deliberately changed to the French spelling “Le”~ Isn’t that poetic?

Founded in 1998, LeTAO is a household name in Hokkaido, Japan!! Its signature double-layer cheese cake has been the perennial bestseller on Rakuten Japan’s online dessert charts. Today, I’m honored to have been invited to Taiwan’s first tasting event, so without further ado, let me introduce it to you all right away~


The top-ranked double-layer cheese cake is made by blending mascarpone and cream cheese!! It’s incredibly smooth and soft~ and not overly sweet~~ With a rich, layered texture, you can actually taste more than one type of cheese slowly melting in your mouth. Apparently, it sells 60,000 units a year on Rakuten Japan!! (It’s the champion product in the cheese cake category!!)

And why do I love LeTAO cakes the most in Japan? Because this company is very strict and never uses shady ingredients—all raw materials are locally sourced from Hokkaido, including the eggs and milk most commonly used in their cakes.

The eggs come from Japan’s ultra-strictly managed “Ishikawa Farm,” while the famously creamy Jersey milk, known nationwide for its rich aroma, is sourced from local Hokkaido farms. Fresh milk is delivered straight from the farms to the factory every day to make cakes, puddings, and other products.

Among today’s tasting of up to 20 kinds of cakes, my second recommendation is the “Love of Venice,” which has a buttery-smooth texture. This cake uses cheeses from both Europe and America—specifically Spanish Parmesan and Hokkaido’s fresh cream—and the taste is somewhat like a chilled pudding, exquisitely delicate.

If you love both pudding and cheese, you definitely can’t miss this “Love of Venice.” It’s guaranteed to melt in your mouth.



The third cake I want to recommend is for those who love intense flavors—the rich, heavy-cream cheese cake, made by blending three types of cheese: cream cheese, Camembert, and mascarpone, then adding a special white grape juice called “Taimi” unique to Otaru (this white grape is only available fresh for three months a year and is very expensive), and slowly baked in a low-temperature steam oven.

If you don’t prefer overly sweet or rich flavors, go for the first double-layer cheese cake. But since I love heavy cream cheese!! And it also has the aroma of white grapes, I highly recommend this premium cake.


And now, things get really exciting!! The “Niagara White Wine Raw Chocolate”—why is this a big deal? Because I’ve never had anything like it in Taiwan before. It’s delicate like cotton candy, but still retains the texture of raw chocolate.

The highlight is that it tastes like a soft candy, yet has a 200% white wine aroma. Why is it called Niagara? Because apparently the white wine used is named Niagara, and it’s said that these chocolates are handcrafted one by one by the chocolatier—not mass-produced by machines!!

If you love chocolate or enjoy trying new things, you should definitely give it a try!! (But don’t eat more than five at once~ kids, this raw chocolate is very sweet, and if you don’t pair it with tea, it might get cloying)


If you’re a chocolate lover, you can also try the Darjeeling Black Tea Chocolate shown below. What kind of magic happens when cocoa meets Darjeeling black tea? Let me tell you, for me, chocolate with black tea aroma is even more enchanting than wine-flavored ones, especially that exquisite taste as it slowly melts in your mouth—it’s pure bliss.

Also, today I tried a dreamy cake that I heard is only given away, not sold.


It’s said that over the past decade since LeTAO was founded, they’ve accumulated over a million members, but only the top 2% of members by spending amount get to receive this handcrafted dream cake on their birthdays each year.

It’s topped with red berry jam, and the inside is filled with fresh cream cheese and peach pulp filling. It’s really sweet but not cloying, with a hint of fruity acidity. It’s said to be very labor-intensive to make, which is why it’s only given away, not sold.


By the way, today’s tasting event was held at a famous café in Zhongshan District—KONAYUKI. Like LeTAO, KONAYUKI also comes from Otaru, Hokkaido, Japan. At KONAYUKI, you can try LeTAO’s super-popular double-layer cheese cake, but if you want other flavors of LeTAO cakes, you’ll still need to order them online for now!!

But now that LeTAO has officially entered Taiwan’s online shopping market, you don’t have to worry about not understanding Japanese or paying international shipping fees.

Now, let’s take a look at the KONAYUKI Café storefront.









Japanese people really pay attention to details when hosting tasting events—they always wear gloves to serve food, and there are even number tags placed in front of the cakes. Doesn’t it feel like a crime scene from a Japanese drama? Like they’re investigating some murder case, haha!!


Here are the Japanese-Chinese name translations and price list for some of the items we tasted today!!





【LeTAO】

Online shopping URL: http://shop.konayuki.tw/

【Café KONAYUKI】　

Address:No. 1, Lane 20, Section 2, Zhongshan North Road, Zhongshan District, Taipei City
Contact Number:02-2522-2010
PS: Here you can try Le Tao’s signature “Double-Layer Cheese Cake.” Other delicious items are only available on their website.


Entertainment Host — Guo Renrong’s Food, Fun & Travel Support Group