The cheesecake at Estadio might be the best desert in Charleston.
What’s on the menu today is very different from the cheesecake offered seven years ago when owner Max Kuller opened the Spanish restaurant.
That’s because Executive Chef Jeremy Gozlan, who took over the Spring Street kitchen 10 months ago, decided to shoot the restaurant’s cheesecake to a new level through experimentation and technique.
Today, Gozlan’s cheesecake is the only dessert on the menu. He shared that this is both for practical reasons and because it is the quintessential Basque (a region in north-central Spain and southwestern France) dessert.
“It speaks to the Spanish vibe of Estadio,” he said.
What’s in a cheesecake?
The Basque cheesecake — also known as torta de queso — was created about four decades ago in San Sebastian, a coastal town in northern Spain.
“You have your New York cheesecake which always has a crust,” Gozlan said. “It’s a little denser, heavier. The Basque cheesecake has no crust. It’s just an emulsification of a few different things like cream and eggs. It always has that burnt crust on the top. A lot of people describe ours as an almost flan-like consistency.”
The current iteration uses a combination of mahón and idiazabal cheeses, but Gozlan has also made the dessert with manchego. He has tried a combination of the three cheeses and each cheese on its own. He has baked it when the mixture is cold and when it’s room temperature.
The cheesecake is generally cooked at 450 degrees Fahrenheit, which allows for the traditional brown caramelization on top.
Flavoring offers the chance to play. The cheesecake’s flavors change, are wide-ranging and might even include a savory slant. Versions have included morel mushrooms, saffron, wild fennel, lemon fig, blueberry, fermented sweet corn with lime and even a vanilla with black honey tobacco.
A chef’s background
Gozlan, born in South Florida to Canadian parents, attended the esteemed Le Cordon Blue culinary school in Wellington, New Zealand. He shared that the school emphasized the importance of things like percentages of fat and cream as well as the freshness of butter when teaching dessert and patisserie.
“It was nice having French chefs who lived to eat pastry and teach you how to make it,” he said.
His first job out of culinary school was as a pastry chef at The Finch, a seasonal American restaurant in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn, N.Y. Gozlan also worked at Lilia, the acclaimed Italian restaurant in Williamsburg from famed Chef Missy Robbins. He moved to Vancouver for a quick stint that was cut short by the pandemic. Then he relocated to Charleston to work at Zero George. Newfoundland lured him back to Canada, where he cooked at the Fogo Island Inn for a season before he returned to Charleston to take over the Estadio kitchen.
The full Estadio experience
Gozlan’s approach to the cheesecake — intentionality and taking his time — applies to the entire menu at Estadio. The only products he is not sourcing locally are lemons and ingredients that are imported from Spain. This philosophy of getting ingredients that are grown, raised or caught close to home is very Spanish.
What else influences Gozlan in the kitchen?
“My grandpa is from Egypt,” he said. “There was a North African influence over Spain for a good 400 to 600 years. I wanted that culinary legacy which is still present in the southern cities of Spain. That Moorish dynasty lives on in the food, in the toasted cumin and coriander. It’s a spice blend that I grew up with at home.”
At the moment, Gozlan is the only chef in the kitchen. Estadio’s dishwasher Malika Bissenbayeva — a Kazakhstan native and recent Charleston transplant — is an unofficial sous chef who often helps Gozlan with prep. She’s also made many a cheesecake, he said.
“She keeps me sane,” he said. “I think I probably talk to her more than anyone in my life. She’s a godsend.”
The restaurant’s menu is an authentic one of Spanish tapas. This means a variety of small plates that are meant to be shared. A traditional gilda stacks olives, peppers and anchovies on a toothpick. The salmorejo is a chilled tomato soup, and there is a classic pan con tomate, a simple yet delectable tomato toast that is garlic and olive oil heavy. Another Spanish classic is the tortilla Española, a combination of egg, potato, onion and smoked paprika. Snowy grouper comes with a butter bean puree, Macabeo (a Spanish white wine grape) and lemon, and clams are paired with cherry bomb peppers, watermelon and breadcrumbs.
“Spanish food — at its core — is whatever they can grow in Spain, served usually as simply as possible,” Gozlan said. “[Spaniards are] eating simple produce, prepared simply.”
And how does that apply at Estadio? “For me, this restaurant is really just about highlighting that ethos by using what we have available here,” he continued. “That’s produce of the Lowcountry prepared as simply as possible with as few ingredients as possible.”
“I feel silly saying something as cliché as this,” Gozlan reflected. “I just really care that it tastes good, so I put a lot of love into it.”
Learn to make a Basque cheesecake
Gozlan is leading a cheesecake cooking class from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. Oct. 4 at Counter Culture Coffee at 85½ Spring St. The event is a fundraiser for Slow Food, an international organization that is “dedicated to protecting the pleasures of the table from the homogenization of modern fast food and life, promoting gastronomic culture, developing taste education, conserving agricultural biodiversity and protecting traditional foods at risk of extinction.” For more information on the class and to purchase tickets, visit slowfoodcharleston.org.
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