Cheesecake lovers rejoice — Basuku Cheesecakes has returned.

The popular Basque cheesecake pop-up halted Bay Area operations from March to December of last year while owner Charles Chen embarked on a "lifelong dream project," helping his friend open a restaurant in Kyoto, Japan. Chen hoped to land a permanent partnership with a restaurant group in San Francisco before leaving for Asia in March, but the deal ultimately fell through. Now, the Oakland resident returns to the kitchens of Vina Enoteca in Palo Alto to continue baking cheesecakes — and hopes the Italian restaurant will take over his one-man production before he returns to Asia in the spring.

Since 2020, Chen has single-handedly churned out nearly 10,000 cheesecakes, experimenting with limited-edition flavors like cookies and cream, chestnut mont blanc, salted caramel and orange creamsicle. Carefully pouring exactly 790 grams of batter into each silver tin, Chen now spends two 12-hour days producing cheesecakes for the weekly pop-up.

Before leaving for Asia, Vina Enoteca allowed Chen to bake on weekdays so he could hold pop-ups on weekends. But since returning from Asia, limited availability of Vina Enoteca's kitchen space has resulted in Tuesday pop-ups — located both at Vina Enoteca and either San Francisco or Oakland. His hungry customers eagerly await details via Basuku's Instagram, and presales generally open Saturdays at noon.

But not all 21,600 Instagram followers can snag a cheesecake each week — Chen only makes 100. And that's not because he's trying to be exclusive or deny his customers of cake. It's because he's the only one baking them.

"It's all just me," he said with a laugh.

So it may come as a surprise that the man who's responsible for making all of Basuku's cheesecakes had never even baked a cheesecake until about three years ago.

"I had never really cooked or baked, and so I'd never really thought I would be doing anything remotely close to what I'm doing right now," Chen said.

A career in restaurant consulting meant being around food but not necessarily cooking it. That was, until the pandemic. Scrolling online, he found a recipe for Basque cheesecake.

"The initial appeal about the recipe was that it was very easy to make," he said with a smile.

While the first cheesecake didn't turn out so well, he was determined to create the perfect recipe, he recalled.

"Back then, all kinds of people were doing these garage-style pop-ups or making food at their home, and I said, 'Why can't I do this too?'" Chen said. "So I basically just started the Instagram page, and that was as far as starting a business as I thought I was gonna do...it just turned into this thing that I really had no idea it would ever become."

Ten thousand cheesecakes later, he's hoping to eventually open up a shop in Taiwan and possibly Japan, a decision influenced by his recent visit.

In March, Chen went to Kyoto to help a friend open a restaurant, and the tasting menu featured Chen's cheesecake as the final dessert.

"Doing the cheesecake in Japan was something I was very intimidated by because the quality of things over there is so high, as well as it's a Japanese-style cheesecake, so I wasn't sure how it would be received," Chen said. "I was fortunate to get a really good response."

Then during the summer, Chen's other friend, a well-known Taipei chef, invited Chen to his restaurant to do a pop-up. Chen sold 1,000 cakes in one month — two to three times the volume he sold in the Bay Area. Now he has a licensing deal that keeps his cheesecakes selling in Taiwan, even when he's not there.

"It was a great experience to not only be a part of the opening and be a part of doing something in Japan, but just the combination of all those things, embracing a bit more of my heritage, as well as just enjoying the quality of life in Japan was really a memorable experience," he said.

And Chen even learned some interesting baking lessons, including that different countries' standards for plain white sugar are all different.

"When you take straight, refined white sugar and you taste it in Japan, it's actually not that sweet. And then in Taiwan, it's middle sweet. And then in America, it's actually the most sweet," he said.

Chen plans on staying in the Bay Area until spring and just announced a new menu item — mini Basque cheesecakes 40% of the size of his original recipe. He hopes a licensing deal with a Bay Area operator, likely Vina Enoteca, will allow him to not only continue selling cheesecakes when he's out of town, but also amp up production to meet demand.

"If I can nail down this deal with the operator that I'm talking to, then there's a very good chance that by the spring or the summer, the cakes will be a lot more available throughout the whole Bay Area," Chen said.

For details on Basuku's next pop-up, follow @basukucheescakes on Instagram. n