On an increasingly occasional trip into the heart of the Sydney CBD — I manage to skirt the edges for work and so avoid all the construction — we stopped by Pablo to pick up some mini cheese tarts that I’d been wanting to try for a while now (and never got around to trying on our numerous trips to Japan).
We picked up a box of six mini tarts (6th one is free). It comes in thoughtful Japanese packaging.
This is the Pablo Mini Original Plain Tart ($3.50).
I was apprehensive about this one as the cheese was overwhelming in a similar one from Uncle Tetsu’s. To my delight, this one has a rich, yet mellow, sweet cheese flavour that’s smooth and incredibly light on the palate, and pairs perfectly with the richer buttery and crunchy pastry. Warming for 10 seconds in a microwave at 1100 W the pastry remains crunchy, while the filling softens. Compared to the flavoured tarts, the filling here is denser and was evident in its shrinking into the tart case after cooling.
This is a Pablo Mini Chocolate Tart ($3.90).
The chocolate is rich, creamy and smooth. The chocolate flavour dominates, masking any tanginess from the cream cheese. Warmed in an 1100 W microwave for 10 seconds, the filling is molten, much like a chocolate lava cake, rather than light and fluffy when cool. This is a delicious chocolate tart, but we feel it’s not really a cheese tart. This one holds its shape best after cooling.
This is a Pablo Mini Matcha Cheese Tart ($3.90).
This is our favourite of the flavours. The crust is crisp, while innards are super creamy, rich, and smooth, yet light with a perfect balance between the sweetness and the characteristic bitterness and umami of quality matcha. There’s the slightest hint of acidity in the background to remind that it’s a cheese tart. Warmed, the pastry remains crisp while the innards are creamy with a lighter mouthfeel and the cheese notes become even more subtle. Compared to the one at Uncle Tetsu’s, which masks the tanginess of the cream cheese, this one displays the cream cheese and matcha in equal measure, making it the preferred cheese tart.
Finally, this is a Pablo Mini Strawberry Cheese Tart ($3.90). It’s a seasonal tart dependent on when strawberries are in season.
This one has a gentle tartness and mellow sweetness from the fresh strawberries that pair well with the natural tanginess of the cream cheese. Warmed in the microwave for 10 seconds at 1100 W, the filling is creamy with a receding tartness and pronounced sweetness. In terms of cheese tarts, we’d rank this behind the plain and ahead of the chocolate. It doesn’t hold its shape well after cooling, though.
The mini cheese tarts at Pablo are enjoyable pockets of creaminess.
After enjoying the mini tarts from Pablo, we finally got around to one of their full size tarts a few months later.
This is the Matcha Cheese Tart ($16.80).
It consisted of ‘matcha batter, filled with a delicious centre of chewy shiratama and azuki bean paste’. Unfortunately, the azuki bean paste is smooth unlike the mashed azuki beans in the promotion pictures.
The pastry is crisp and flaky with a rich buttery flavour while the matcha cheese innards are soft and smooth with a pudding like consistency, although the matcha flavour was less pronounced and sweeter than the batter of the mini tart. The rivers of azuki paste with a smooth jam-like consistency and sweetness swirl throughout the matcha cheese filling, with globs of mochi — there were five in total — bringing the perfect chewiness being neither too soft nor too firm.
We enjoy the cheese tart but would’ve appreciated a chunkier, less smooth azuki filling. Overall, though, we so enjoy the pastry that we find the smaller tarts more satisfying with their more generous pastry to innards ratio.
Pablo is located at 605 George St (store located on Goulburn St), Sydney NSW 2000.