Meet Gregory, the cheesecake guy

Before meeting Gregory Guy, I had no idea that some cheesecake makers would put toppings on their cheesecake to hide its flaws. I always thought toppings were there for taste, not as the proverbial rug under which bubbles and lumps are swept. Some may say these are little mistakes that don’t really take away from the cake’s taste, but seeing Greg’s cheesecakes at his new coffee shop called Cheesecakes by Guy, I get why he brings this up. The cakes are flawless — smooth, tight, rich and even in color. No toppings. I dig a fork into the Queso de Bola Cheesecake slice and it is soft, not the thick New York variety. I put another fork in the Pineapple Cheesecake. Surprisingly good. And then a teeny little teaspoon into the Cheesecake Ice Cream. Delightful. I wondered when the deliciousness would end, but it never did.

He serves me a creamy Ham and Cheese Egg White Omelet that’s so smooth and folded so perfectly that it looks like a crepe, then proceeds to full chef mode, explaining the dish to me: “People tend to overcook eggs. Eggs are a very, very hard protein to cook. It takes 10 seconds for it to go from perfect to well done. I hope to educate people to cook and eat eggs the way they are supposed to be eaten, soft and creamy. If you know how to cook — not in the way that you know how to cook adobo, ha — if you have been to culinary school and you are familiar with eggs, it can be easier to eat. If you’re cooking them on high heat, on demand, it’s easy to go wrong.”

This is something he learned working at Jean Georges at The Mark Hotel in New York’s Upper East Side. “I trained in breakfast, pizza and a little bit of butchering,” he explains. But his real journey started right after graduating from Ateneo de Manila with a degree in management economics. “I was born into a family of businessmen and I was supposed to take over the family business, but there was a family feud, our company went into the hands of someone else. I realized I didn’t have to work in a bank or behind a desk. So I asked my parents to send me to Paris to take up culinary. It took me months to convince them. I had to prepare Excel files to show them how much monthly expenses would be — it was like a pitch every day to my father,” he explains.

And to Paris he went. “I studied at Le Cordon Bleu and finished a Cuisine diploma, which took nine months. I didn’t finish Pastry because the last pastry course dealt with sugar and chocolates and that meant chocolate sculptures, which takes days to make and would cost you maybe P20,000 to P30,000 and I don’t think there’s a market for that in the Philippines.

“After that I had an internship in a two-Michelin star restaurant, fully booked every day, there was so much to do. And I had the chance to cook, which was great because normally interns just cook potatoes — and that’s not a myth, that’s a true story when you work in Michelin star restaurants because everything has to be precise,” he says. “The leaves in salads have to be perfect, for example. They’d have to be mid-size, nothing too small, nothing too big, no blemishes, no folds. So everything else is thrown away. That’s why when you eat in a fine dining restaurant you are only served one or two leaves — and you know that these leaves are handpicked. It’s not random that they are perfect. So that was my experience preparing fine-dining Michelin-quality food.”

After Paris and New York, Greg came back to the Philippines and started selling his cheesecakes. “I’ve been selling my cheesecakes from home for the past four years, and under this brand for the past 16 months. I launched the brand at Cash Cash Pinoy — 50 percent off. It sold very well, but made almost no profit because of the discount, but it was a good start. People got to know my cakes. I go to events and introduce myself and they say, ‘Oh, I’ve tasted your cakes. They were given to me as a gift.’ And I’ve gotten a lot of good reviews. Then Eastwood came to me one day and asked if I wanted to put up a coffee shop,” he explains. It must’ve been a match made in heaven, just like Greg’s cheesecakes and everything else on the Cheesecakes by Guy menu.

“I make my coffee. A small roaster makes my beans, and I chose the blend so that it goes well with my cheesecakes — 50 percent Arabica from Brazil and 50 percent Robusta from Vietnam. My espresso shots are perfect with the cheesecakes. I serve teas from California and they’re also very good with my cheesecakes. I make sure that the food, the coffee and the tea, all revolve around my cheesecakes,” Greg says.

And with over 20 flavors of cheesecakes, it only makes sense that everything else goes well them. “I have Japanese cheesecakes, which are very light, my fiesta line — ube, queso de bola, dulce de leche and barako coffee. I have classic cheesecakes. I have premium cheesecakes. I have black sesame cheesecakes…. All of my ingredients are fresh, most of them imported because I believe that when you use good ingredients and proper technique, you can’t go wrong with the final product.”

For Cheesecakes by Guy, Greg took inspiration from the familiar and made it just several notches better. “My peg for opening this was a higher-end version of a popular coffee shop chain. People go to coffee shops to eat and drink their coffee, but they serve everything commercial standard. I went to a coffee shop and ordered a latte — and I couldn’t taste the coffee. You taste hot, burnt milk. When you heat milk in a high temperature, you lose the flavor of the milk. The proper way to steam milk is to hold the jug and stop as soon as you are about to burn your hand. You should be able to drink your coffee right away without burning yourself. And you have to buy another shot just to actually taste coffee, and when you do that, our coffee comes out cheaper,” he explains.

The ambiance is also infinitely cozier. Greg tells me people might complain that it’s too dark — but to me that’s what makes it a great hangout. It feels expensive but is not, and the chef is always there to make sure that the food is good. There’s free WiFi, and the chairs are comfy, even the barstools. As I finish everything on the table — three flavors of cheesecake, two omelets, one panini, scoop of ice cream, a pot of tea, a cool ginger soda (and a partridge in a pear tree), I say “Cheese,” take a selfie, and caption it: “I shall return.”

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Cheesecakes by Guy is at the 2nd floor of the Eastwood Mall, Eastwood Avenue, Quezon City. For orders, call (0917) 898-8396 or (02) 634-4362.