In India it is so easy to find desserts that are whipped up from local ingredients, but finding an adept patisserie is an utter rarity. Skimming through Grazia magazine, I first found out about the avant-garde patisserie ‘Love& Cheesecake’ located in Mumbai. Love & Cheesecake is a beautiful blend of passion, obsession, flavour and magic and most importantly love!
The A1 dessert destination was started by Ruchyeta Bhatia and Chef Amit Sharma in 2012 as a 200 square feet experimental kitchen on Linking Road, Bandra. After being dormant for a few months, the patisserie started gaining customers after being featured in a local blog.
“When we started, I didn’t have my own house, so I used to sleep in the same kitchen. One day, I started getting calls, saying I need five slices, 10 slice and more, we wondered how it happened. Later, we figured out that a journalist wrote about us” says Sharma.
They offer around 120 types of desserts, all with amazing texture and unforgettable flavours which are also available in eggless variations. Apart from serving desserts, Love& Cheesecake delivers fresh cakes throughout Mumbai.They take great pride in crafting their desserts to perfection with imported dessert cheeses rather than from cheaper whipped cream alternatives and use fresh fruit instead of using artificial flavours. They also offer selective non-cheesecake desserts, Tiramisu and chocolate cakes to name a few. Their newest venture is into customized hand-made chocolates for gifting for companies in a variety of innovative flavors like Strawberry Balsamic, Honey & Ginger, Thyme & Rosemary Truffles, Saffron, Cardamom etc.The observation that chocolates are being used as a gift alongside wedding card instead of conventional sweets has propelled them into this new venture.Both Ruchyeta and Amit believe in being unconventional and adding a special touch to all their offerings.
On being asked about how all this started, Ruchyeta says,”It was actually love at first bite! I was in New York for vacation and I went into this quaint little bake shop in East Village where I ordered a New York style cheesecake. I really cannot put it in words, but as I dug in, the sights and sounds of New York simply blurred into the background. I was so amazed by the flavors, the smoothness and consistency of texture that it took me an hour to finish that slice. And it was the simplicity of it all that made me fall in love. I knew it then. I had to create this very cheesecake back in Mumbai!”
Interestingly, Ruchyeta and Amit use crowd-sourcing to get their dessert ideas from customers. They periodically ask their customers on Facebook and Twitter for suggestions and then invite them over for a personalized tasting session to taste these new flavors.By doing this, they came up with some ideas like Red-velvet, Burnt Orange and Honey, Pecan nut and Praline, Cocoa Cinnamon and Chili.
On being asked for a piece of advice when staring a food business, Ruchyeta said “Be prepared for a long haul. Scaled businesses are built over the long run. And one needs to look at a 10-15 year window to scale a food business sustainably.”
Love & Cheesecake is rated a 4.6 out of 5 on the extremely popular food delivery app Zomato, which clearly shows the impact Ruchyeta’s cheesecakes made on the crowd. The exquisite patisserie has also been featured on Vogue, Elle, Filmfare, Grazia, Upper Crust and many more leading publications.
Love & Cheesecake currently operates in 8 locations across Mumbai including including Bandra, Kala Ghoda, Lower Parel, Juhu, Powai, Thane, Lokhandwala and their central kitchen is based in Vikhroli with over 250 employees in all the locations combined. So if you are a resident of Mumbai or a visitor, make sure you try these amazing range of cheesecakes!
