Lamoone

One cake, five ways

The case at Lamoone holds a single form: Basque cheesecake, baked at high heat until the top goes dark and the centre stays loose and custardy. Everything else follows from that decision. This Chinatown bakehouse and brew lab opened quietly in late 2025 with no sourdough, no baguettes, no croissants and no tart selection, and the narrow focus is the point. The Basque style comes from Spain's Basque Country, where the cake is baked without a proper crust and the caramelised surface does the work a pastry shell would do elsewhere. Lamoone keeps that technique and changes the flavour language, running the custard through ingredients more common in Southeast and East Asian sweets than in a New York dessert case.

A counter, a case and a short decision

The shop is built for a quick visit. You come in, read the flavours in the display case, order at the counter, and leave with a slice or a whole cake. There is no dining room and no table service, so the visit turns on one choice rather than a long stay, which suits a product where the only real question is which version to take. The brew lab half of the name sits alongside the baking, though the counter's centre of gravity is firmly the cake. Chinatown gives the shop its context: traditional bakeries, tea houses and newer dessert specialists sit within a few blocks, and this small-format, one-product model reads as a deliberate answer to them rather than as a general neighbourhood bakery.

Start classic, then take the pandan

Order the classic first. It is the reference point for the house texture, a high-heat bake with a browned, almost burnt top over a creamy interior, and it shows what the flavoured versions are built on. From there the lineup splits by ingredient. Thai tea carries the orange-hued, sweet-spiced profile familiar from Thai drinks and desserts. Ube brings the purple yam associated with Filipino baking. Pandan adds the grassy, aromatic screwpine leaf used across Southeast Asia, and sweet basil pushes furthest from convention, borrowing an herb usually kept to savoury cooking. None of these arrive as a topping on a plain cake. The flavours are worked into the custard base itself, so the Basque form stays intact while the profile changes underneath. Two slices make a better visit than one: the classic for the technique, and a flavoured version for the argument the bakery is making.