Ask ten New Yorkers which cheesecake is best and you will get eleven arguments. This is not a minor culinary squabble — it is a full-on city-wide debate with loyal camps, generational loyalties, and at least one family rift we know about personally. The good news: all that arguing means New York has spent decades producing some of the finest cheesecake on the planet. Here is what you actually need to know before you take a slice.
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What Actually Makes a New York Cheesecake
The term “New York cheesecake” is thrown around loosely, but it has a real definition. A true New York cheesecake is made with cream cheese — not ricotta, not cottage cheese, not mascarpone. It uses heavy cream or sour cream, eggs, and sugar, baked at a high temperature and then finished low and slow to avoid cracking. The result is dense, rich, and tall, with a smooth texture that holds its shape when sliced.
The crust is typically a graham cracker base pressed into the tin rather than a pastry shell. Some recipes add a small amount of lemon zest or vanilla for fragrance, but the cream cheese flavour should dominate. That is the baseline. Everything else is a variation.
Junior’s: The Benchmark
If you are going to argue about New York cheesecake, you have to start with Junior’s. The Brooklyn institution opened in 1950, and its original plain cheesecake has been the reference point ever since. It is not the tallest. It is not the creamiest. But it has a specific, slightly tangy flavour from the sponge cake base — yes, sponge cake, not graham cracker — that its fans will tell you is non-negotiable.
Junior’s ships nationwide now and has locations in Grand Central and Times Square, but the original DeKalb Avenue spot in Downtown Brooklyn is still the place to go for authenticity. The plain original is the one to order. Topped versions exist but they are not the point.
Eileen’s Special Cheesecake: The Individual Slice Cult
In SoHo, Eileen’s Special Cheesecake has been selling individual slices since 1975. The style here is lighter and creamier than Junior’s, with more of a soufflé-like texture that comes from a higher proportion of eggs. It has a devoted following among people who find the dense Brooklyn style too heavy. The toppings are genuinely good — strawberry, cherry, blueberry — because the lighter base holds fruit without the whole thing becoming cloying.
Eileen’s is also notable for being one of the few places that still does cheesecake almost entirely by hand. That matters in terms of texture consistency. You can taste the difference.
Two Little Red Hens: The Midtown Challenger
Two Little Red Hens on 2nd Avenue is a proper American bakery that does several things well, but its New York cheesecake has quietly built a reputation that rivals the bigger names. The texture sits between Junior’s dense bite and Eileen’s airier version — creamy but substantial, with a clean finish that does not leave you feeling leaden. The graham cracker crust is thicker than most, which helps balance the richness of the filling.
It is a neighbourhood bakery that tourists do not always find, which makes it a genuine local tip rather than a tourist circuit stop.
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The Ricotta Question
There is a parallel tradition in New York’s Italian-American bakeries that replaces cream cheese with ricotta, producing a drier, grainier cake with a different flavour profile entirely. Technically this is not a New York-style cheesecake as most people define the term — it is an Italian-American cheesecake, sometimes called a Sicilian or Roman style. It has its own merits. It is less rich, less sweet, and pairs better with espresso than the cream cheese version does.
Bakeries in Arthur Avenue in the Bronx and along a few remaining old-school Italian spots in Carroll Gardens still make proper ricotta versions. They are worth seeking out as a separate experience rather than as a direct competitor to the Junior’s style — judging them against each other is like comparing a sourdough loaf to a brioche. Both are bread. That is where the comparison ends.
What the Toppings Debate Is Really About
Plain versus topped is its own argument. Purists — and there are many — say a great New York cheesecake needs nothing on top. The cream cheese flavour is the point. A strawberry glaze is a distraction. This is not an unreasonable position.
On the other hand, a well-made fruit topping — fresh strawberries rather than a tinned glaze, or a sharp sour cherry compote — can genuinely complement the richness of the filling by cutting through it. The problem is that many places use pre-made toppings that are too sweet and too thick, which turns a potentially good combination into something that tastes like jam on butter.
The honest answer is: order plain on your first visit to any cheesecake counter. Once you know the baseline quality of the filling, you will have a much better sense of whether the topped version improves it or just buries it.
Baked vs No-Bake
No-bake cheesecakes — set with gelatine rather than eggs, chilled rather than cooked — are not New York cheesecakes. This is not a snobbish position; it is simply a category distinction. The texture, flavour, and density are all different. No-bake versions can be good, but they are a separate dessert. Most New York cheesecake debate concerns the baked style, and that is the version this guide addresses.
Where to Start If You Are New to This
If you are visiting New York and want to form an actual opinion rather than just following the loudest recommendation, here is a practical approach. Go to Junior’s first — the DeKalb Avenue original if you can manage it. Order the plain cheesecake. Eat it without overthinking it. Then, if you are in SoHo, stop at Eileen’s and try a slice of their plain version. The contrast between the two styles will tell you immediately which direction your preferences run.
From there, you can get specific. Dense and tangy? Junior’s and its imitators. Light and creamy? Eileen’s style. A middle ground with a serious crust? Two Little Red Hens. The debate does not have a correct answer — it has a correct question, which is: what do you actually like?
The Cheesecake That Gets Overlooked
Veniero’s Pasticceria in the East Village has been open since 1894 and makes both a cream cheese and a ricotta version. It is one of the few places where you can try both styles in the same sitting, which makes it genuinely useful as a point of comparison rather than just a nostalgia trip. The setting — marble counters, glass cases, century-old fittings — is worth the visit on its own. The cheesecake is a good reason to stay.
The city has no shortage of new-wave dessert spots that put modern spins on classic cheesecake, from Japanese cotton-style versions to burnt Basque adaptations. They are interesting. They are not the debate. The debate is about the real thing, and the real thing is still very much alive in New York.
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