I look forward to Muji Cafe's festive menu every year, because the quality of their innovations is easily 1-star Michelin standard, beating many hotel festive buffets, but costing only $20-30 for 2 diners (if you add all the available options to their 4-deli set meal, such as drink, quiche and dessert).
For the pork patty, the fruity condiments complemented the gamey red meat taste very well, lightening it, adding complexity and brightness, and making it festive in feel.
This year, they did not fail to impress. The most interesting discovery was their butternut pumpkin cheesecake (or officially "Butternut Burnt Cheesecake"), which is a butternut pumpkin flavoured version of the basque-style burnt cheesecake.
I didn't think that 2 mellow flavours - cream cheese and pumpkin - would go well together, and did not expect the pumpkin flavour to be prominent at all. But it turned out to be one of the smoothest, most heavenly combinations I've had.
Instead of piling on the fats by using more butter or cream to enhance the creaminess of the cheesecake, the butternut pumpkin's sweetness, nuttiness and creaminess from a vegetable origin helped to tone down the heavy richness of dairy products while contributing an earthy, buttery and nutty flavour. It was not a strong one, but it was unmistakably present throughout the entire cheesecake, and it was possibly one of the most pleasant and comforting subtly flavoured cheesecakes I've had.
They did also have some pretty nice chunks of butternut pumpkin at the bottom, which added more sweetness and the non-heavy buttery nutty taste near the bottom.
Overall, this was a most innovative and genius way to make a mellow yet rich, buttery and creamy yet light cheesecake. I hope to see this combination from more patisseries someday.
Finally, because their Christmas menu was impeccable, I had to feature it briefly. The festive delis I tried were the Pork Patty, Apple Sauce with Orange Salsa (12 o'clock in the image below), the Butternut Mash, Pulled Pork, Kale with Creamy Sesame Dressing (4-5 o'clock) and the Beetroot Bacon Salad with Maple Dressing.
The butternut mash was great because the earthy umami pork helped to complement the buttery pumpking taste, and the kale and sesame dressing further enhanced the earthiness with other flavours of their own.
Finally, earthy beetroot went very well with caramelised bacon and burnt maple, with the sweetness fro the maple and beetroot just right. There was also brussel sprouts and baby spinach, which rounded out the experience very well.
They also had a lovely Christmas-special quiche, available only as an add-on to their deli set, but I didn't take a picture. It was some truffle, cheese, cream, salmon and seafood heavenly mouthful. Like a top creamy seafood pasta sauce with the seafood umami well brought out, except that instead of pasta, it was on a perfect buttery quiche short crust.
So their Christmas menu is always worth trying, often multiple times. Last year, I featured their Gingerbread Apple Prune Roll (and the delis are also covered in this post) and their Hojicha Biscoff Castella, which made it to their menu again this year.
Discover other pumpkin and cheese treats
- Macrobiotic Vegetable & Herb Cookies - Purple Sweet Potato, Gobo, Carrot, Pumpkin and Yomogi (Japanese Mugwort) Cookies
- Ajigen Mos Burger Potato Stick, Teriyaki and Gorgonzola Blue Cheese Flavour
- Mascarpone Latte by Luckin Coffee
- Red Velvet Cream Cheese Brownie by Butterbear from Thailand
- Honey and Cheese Sun Cakes by Ru Yi Tang
- Blueberry Cheese Ball Shigure (Blueberry Bean Cake) by Minamoto Kitchoan
- Sweet Pumpkin Bread by Bakery 1946
- Spiced Pumpkin Velouté
- Pumpkin Baked Cake
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