Like a pillow, the way it sits plump in photos. The smooth filling melts with grace over the crusted base, buttery and dense. There are no fancy fruit toppings, no glossy glaze; it’s served in an unassuming black tin can. But you can almost taste the earthy brown of the tablea and the deep, burnished tones of the caramelized top from a single picture alone.
It’s all over the website of Loca Cheesecakes, one of Cebu’s finest cheesecake brands in the city. The button that leads to the menu and payment portal says, “taste the craziness,” albeit with a lack of anything crazy in the cheesecakes alone. Just some sleek, polished goodness in their four-cake offering.
For Gonzalo Bermejo, owner of Loca Cheesecakes, it’s this deceptive simplicity of these cakes that captivated him in the first place. “I was so fixated on getting a good recipe,” Gonzalo said, whose journey with the dessert got obsessively passionate when he realized it was “so damn hard” to make.
Has Gonzalo always been so passionate? From his social media, it looks to be. He relayed his story on a set of pictures posted to Loca’s Instagram account: how he swerved from construction and sales in Spain into a life of baking in the Philippines.
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“I fell in love with the Philippines even before falling in love with Dulce,” Gonzalo said. Dulce is his wife, and her name is Spanish for sweet. She is a Filipina, hailing from Cebu. From here, you can see how things fell into place. Still, it was a “crazy idea” for the two of them to uproot their lives after five years in Spain to build a cheesecake business in Cebu.
“I’ve been told many times that Cebuanos are hard to please,” Gonzalo remarked. “And that if you can make it in Cebu, you can make it anywhere in the Philippines.”
So, he did his best to make it in Cebu.
Gonzalo’s initial goal was to bring authentic Spanish cheesecake to Cebu. However, he realized that if his business were to be successful, he had to also meet Cebuanos where they are, not just the other way around.
In one of his trips to Carbon market — the province’s largest and oldest public market — he bought sikwate and puto maya and tasted tablea for the first time. The experience “felt like magic” to him.
“That raw cocoa was always on my mind as a great addition to the cheesecake, and I wasn’t wrong,” Gonzalo said. Loca Tableya then became a permanent fixture in the menu.
The rich purple of Loca Ube came into the mix soon after as Gonzalo continued to experiment with local flavors. The purple yam became a worldwide sensation early this year, though Gonzalo had it on his menu long before the craze started.
But his specialty remains Spanish, so the next sibling was quite a black sheep. Loca Intensa, a limited edition release for National Day of Spain, is made out of blue cheese, a product that is not mainstream in everyday Filipino food.
“Filipinos like intense flavors,” Gonzalo noted. Even to his surprise, the reception of the Loca Intensa was warm. He admits it’s not for everyone, but it does have its fans. “They are even asking to have it as part of the permanent menu,” he mused.
Every flavor has landed so far, but building the business around them hasn’t been the easiest. Gonzalo would rather not think about “how many hours I spent in the elevator,” making the trip from his 29th-floor apartment to the lobby and back, again and again, just to hand off each order.
Cebu’s tumultuous climate has also been a challenge. In Gonzalo’s latest YouTube video chronicling his business journey, he started off discussing how Typhoon Tino (Kalmaegi) destroyed property, claimed lives, and left the province without water or electricity for days. Loca Cheesecakes had to pause to focus on survival.
“If you are watching how I am building a business in the Philippines…you need to take these kinds of things into account,” he advised. “Big storms might come. This year, we also had a big earthquake.”
He throws the following questions to budding business owners: How afraid are you of these kinds of things? How can you cope with the uncertainty and risks?
Gonzalo is willing to adjust. He’s been doing it this whole time: moving countries, adding Filipino flavors into his Spanish cakes, resuming operations after storms. Even when he can’t speak Bisaya well, and he admits it’s sometimes hard for him to be understood, he takes it in stride. He does all this for the love of the game and its many, many adoring fans.
“The joy and warmth of the Filipinos always make every interaction more manageable and light,” Gonzalo said, reflecting on his crazy journey so far.
Any more crazy ideas in store? Gonzalo says yes, “too many probably.” But he’s keeping them close to his chest for now. One crazy idea at a time, he says. For now it’s “selling cheesecakes…we are going to focus on this for a while before going crazier again.”
Photography Kyrra Kho
