It might seem like cheesecake has never been away, but it hasn't appeared on top restaurants' dessert menus for a very long time

In the world of restaurant food fashion, desserts have always had a slower turnover than starters and mains. Favourite puddings stay favourite for far longer, as the prolonged reigns of crème brûlée and pannacotta have shown. Change is afoot right now though, with the sudden rise to ubiquity on upscale menus of cheesecake.

Its return to favour is all of a piece with the rehabilitation of heritage dishes, one of the defining themes of modern British cooking. From the moment that bowls of rice pudding blobbed with jam started elbowing aside the mille-feuilles and soufflés of haute cuisine, it was clear the world had changed. Jelly, once comprehensively banished to kids' parties and the domestic trifle, suddenly bestrode the world like a wobbly colossus. Popcorn, candy-floss, spins on arctic roll, confections based on the contents of our school lunch-boxes (Mars bars, Snickers, peanut-butter sandwiches) are the cheerily regressive mood of the moment.

Having waited its turn longer than most, cheesecake has been the undoubted hot-button pudding of this year. The belatedness of its comeback might seem odd, in that it has a slightly more elevated culinary pedigree than the likes of arctic roll. It never went away from the menus of burger joints and pizza chains but it hasn't been considered high-end posh for a very long time. And now it is.

It isn't, of course, a British dish. Some archetype of it based on milled cheese, flour and egg was served to participants in the ancient Greek Olympic Games, and sweet tarts based on soft cheeses like ricotta have long been known as festive foods in southern Italy. The version traditional in New York is a development of a dessert made by German Jewish migrants, which began its American career with the invention of cream cheese in the 1870s.

This said, everybody knows there is also a type of cheesecake that comes in a foil dish from the supermarket, traditionally from the deep-freeze. It has a base of smashed digestive biscuits which supports a deep layer of sweetened cream cheese set with gelatine, and a red or purple topping of something resembling fruit compote. (That might look a bit artificial but, as Homer Simpson once reminded us, "purple is a fruit".) The one piece of culinary wizardry preparing this requires is to take it out of the foil while it's still frozen, otherwise you'll get yourself into an unseemly gunge at the table later on.

At a restaurant on Dartmoor the other week, I ate a cheesecake that had been subjected to a radical deconstruction. The cream cheese had been freed of its top layer and base and garnished with a tangle of candied lemon rind, the raspberry topping appearing as a swipe to one side and the biscuit crumbs in a careful little heap on the other. I'm sure I'm not the only diner to find this kind of disassembly borderline ridiculous, but that said, it tasted fabulous.

The Cross at Kingussie in the Scottish Highlands is offering a defiantly traditional white chocolate cheesecake topped with a compote of berries from the local Alvie estate, while at Cheltenham's much-acclaimed Le Champignon Sauvage, David Everitt-Matthias partners vanilla cheesecake with salted chicory-root mousse and bitter chocolate sorbet. Philip Howard at The Square in Mayfair replaces the basic cream cheese with French Brillat-Savarin in a cheesecake garnished with gooseberries and elderflower. The Criterion on Piccadilly Circus has been offering a limited-edition dried-fruit cheesecake with a nougat centre and chocolate top.

Perhaps the most interesting version of the dish around though, is the Japanese Chīzukēki, an untopped baked cheesecake made from emulsified cornflour, beaten egg white and cream cheese. It isn't hugely sweet, and has a texture something like firm brie. Coming soon to a noodle bar near you.

{loadposition user38} source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/wordofmouth/2011/jul/25/return-of-the-cheesecake

source: http://www.europerank.com/lifestyle/lifestyle/55443-cheesecake-on-the-whey-back