Program Name Bizarre Foods: Delicious Destinations
Source COOK - Syndicated
Market National Programming
Time Aug 17, 2025 1:22 PM EDT
All around the country, you see on different menus New York cheesecake. Hop in any New York cab. Tell the driver you want cheesecake. They'll take you to Junior's Restaurant, just blocks from Barclays Center in downtown Brooklyn, a busy business district undergoing rapid rejuvenation. Not everything here is changing. Alan Rosen is the third-generation gatekeeper of Junior's definitive recipe.
"My grandfather opened the restaurant here on election day 1950 with my father and my uncle. And he said, 'If we're going to be a great restaurant in New York, we have to have great cheesecake.' And they literally did laboratory-like experiments. And they hit upon this magic formula, and it hasn't changed in over 65 years."
Cheesecake recipes are found as far back as Ancient Greece. Modern cheesecake was developed after the American-style cream cheese was invented in 1872. Arnold Reuben of Reuben sandwich fame is credited with inventing New York-style cheesecake. And some think that Junior's perfected it.
"When I first started working here, we didn't have a recipe except for on a little, torn up handwritten piece of paper in my dad's handwriting. Bakers, like Armando Chavez, make up 10,000 Junior's cheesecakes a week. It starts with a blend of corn starch and sugar, then cream cheese, vanilla and more sugar. Eggs and heavy cream are gradually added as the batter mixes for 45 minutes. We take our time with it. So, we're not putting a lot of air into the cheesecake. New York cheesecake is supposed to be very sturdy and dense, creamy."
While the batter mixes, a baker slices rounds of white cake baked in house specifically for the base, the crust, of the cheesecake. Irony of ironies, Alan's grandfather wanted to take the richest and densest desert on planet Earth and make it just a squeak lighter. "Me, I'm a graham cracker crust guy, myself," Zimmern says. The finished batter goes into a huge dispenser. The press of a pedal shoots out uniform blasts of the creamy mixture onto the sponge cake crusts.
"We bake all our cheesecakes in a water bath. We add water around every pan. Spreads the heat evenly so the cakes can bake without burning on the bottoms because of how dense they are. We also think it prevents some of the cracking that a lot of people get when they make cheesecake."
After 45 minutes in the oven, the cheesecake has to cool before Alan slices up a piece of Brooklyn history, no frills attached. Yeah, this is the way you're supposed to eat it. You can put fresh fruit on it if you like, but this is the way you should try it the first time. It's moist, sweet but not too sweet. Heavenly. When you take a bite, it's just smooth and silky. And the crust on it is real light and airy. It's not heavy like a graham cracker crumb. The cheesecake melts in your mouth, and you're left with a tanginess at the end. It has a perfect cheesecake taste. Coming to Brooklyn to have New York-style cheesecake, you know you're getting the real deal.
