Grotto Pizza is the latest in a line of NEPA restaurants adding Cheesecake Lady desserts to its menu…
There is something deeply satisfying about ending a meal with a dessert that feels as though someone actually cared about it.
Not the obligatory slice that arrives still carrying the chill of a freezer, but something made by hands that understand restraint, the difference between richness and excess, between sweetness and indulgence.
That is the quiet promise behind Grotto Pizza’s newest collaboration.
The regional pizza chain recently announced that cheesecakes from Pittston-based The Cheesecake Lady are now available at its Wilkes-Barre restaurant, with the partnership extending to all three of Grotto’s Northeastern Pennsylvania locations. The first featured flavors, Chocolate Covered Strawberry and Blueberry Cobbler, are exactly the kind of desserts that encourage diners to reconsider the familiar phrase, “I’m too full.”
The announcement is news for Grotto customers.
But it is also another chapter in a much larger story unfolding across the Wyoming Valley.
Even before Grotto joined the list, The Cheesecake Lady had been quietly finding its way onto restaurant dessert menus throughout the region. What began as custom orders and specialty cakes has grown into a business trusted by restaurants that understand an important truth: making memorable desserts every single day requires a different kind of expertise than making memorable dinners.
That steady expansion says as much about the local food scene as it does about cheesecake.
Before you ever take a bite, the cakes invite you closer. A towering New York-style cheesecake rises almost impossibly high above its graham cracker crust, smooth enough to catch the afternoon light, needing little more than a few berries to complete the picture. A Strawberries & Cream cheesecake reveals delicate pink layers folded around whole strawberries, while the Cannoli cheesecake borrows the best part of the Sicilian pastry, the sweet ricotta filling flecked with miniature chocolate chips, without sacrificing the velvety texture that makes cheesecake its own pleasure. Even the playful Moose Tracks manages a certain elegance, ribbons of chocolate draped across an Oreo crust without tipping into excess.
There is imagination here, certainly. Banana Split. Almond Joy. Blueberry Cobbler. Cinnamon Roll. Lemon Blueberry. Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup.
But clever flavors only persuade someone to order the first slice.
The return visit belongs to the cheesecake itself.
The cakes strike a balance that is more difficult than it appears. Dense without becoming heavy. Rich without exhausting the palate. Sweet enough to satisfy, yet carrying enough of cream cheese’s gentle tang to remind you that sugar has not taken over the conversation. It’s the kind of balance that shows up repeatedly in online reviews, where favorite flavors vary wildly but the praise remains remarkably consistent.
One customer raves about Lemon Blueberry and Reese’s, another about Funfetti and custom cookies, while another simply writes that the cheesecake is “exceptional,” lingering on its texture long after naming the flavor. Those reactions speak less to novelty than to consistency, a quality restaurants value just as much as customers do.
Success, fittingly, arrived much the same way.
The Cheesecake Lady didn’t suddenly appear as one of the area’s best-known dessert makers. It happened gradually, one restaurant at a time.
In a recent Facebook post thanking the businesses that have supported her bakery, the owner reflected on relationships that stretch back years, naming restaurants including Tap’d on Main (Luzerne, PA), 279 Bar & Grill (Plains, PA), Marianacci’s Restaurant (West Wyoming, PA), Mylana’s Italian Ristorante (Hanover, PA), Luca Pizza (West Pittston, PA), Dino’s Pizza (Wilkes-Barre, PA), The Fire Pit (Pittston, PA) and Stegmaier Mansion (Wilkes-Barre, PA). Grotto was introduced simply as the newest addition.
Read quickly, it feels like a list. Read more carefully, and it becomes a map.
It traces a network of independently owned restaurants that have chosen to showcase the work of another local small business instead of treating dessert as an afterthought. In doing so, they have helped create something larger than any single menu: a food community that increasingly celebrates collaboration instead of competition.
Grotto’s place in that story feels especially fitting.
For generations, the restaurant has occupied a comfortable place in the region’s dining habits. Families gather over trays of pizza after Little League games. Friends meet for wings and beer while a game plays overhead. Regulars return because some restaurants become part of the rhythm of life, and Grotto has earned that kind of familiarity.
Now, the last course carries a distinctly Pittston signature.
Perhaps that is the most satisfying part of this partnership.
Not simply that Grotto has added cheesecake, but that another local restaurant has recognized what diners throughout the Wyoming Valley have been discovering for years: sometimes the most memorable part of a meal is the slice that arrives at the very end.
