A homemade video splicing Leonardo DiCaprio's face from Inception with footage of a Baltimore baker selling Basque cheesecake has racked up more than 24 million views on Instagram, and the sudden fame sold out a Fells Point pop-up stall in under an hour. Shawn Zhu, who founded Èdo Cheesecake with Gasper Lyu, says he never expected the clip to take off the way it did.
Zhu's video, which reworked scenes from Christopher Nolan's 2010 thriller alongside shots of him hawking his cheesecake, also pulled in 57,000 upvotes on Reddit's r/funny and roughly 1 million likes on Instagram, according to The Baltimore Banner. Zhu told the outlet the video itself was not especially good, but it was his first real taste of how far social media can carry a small business. Clip parodies built around DiCaprio's expressive film roles, including scenes from Inception, have long been one of the internet's most reliable meme templates, a dynamic that helped the video travel far beyond Baltimore, according to AutoMemes.ai.
The Pitch: Not Too Sweet
At the center of the video is Zhu's now-viral pitch that his cheesecake is “not too sweet” — a phrase that reads as throwaway to some but carries real cultural weight. In East Asian baking traditions and Asian American food culture, describing a dessert as not too sweet is widely regarded as the highest form of culinary praise, reflecting a philosophy that favors balance over heavy sugar, per Tasting Table. Zhu has leaned into that voice elsewhere too, filming parodies of The Wire and Breaking Bad featuring his cheesecake, and he has said he learned much of his English from television series.
The attention translated into real foot traffic. The Banner's report notes that Èdo Cheesecake's business grew by roughly 30 percent thanks to the viral surge, per marketing specialist Rita Yang, who is also the company's only other employee besides Zhu. The pop-up stall at Broadway Market sold out less than an hour after opening on Tuesday, the same report states.
A National Chain Notices
The video's reach was broad enough to catch the attention of a national chain with its own recent Baltimore chapter. The Cheesecake Factory's Instagram account commented on the clip with “absolute cinema… served with cheesecake,” a notably good-natured touch given that the chain closed its 29-year-old Inner Harbor location at Harborplace earlier this year, cutting roughly 115 jobs, as Hoodline previously reported. That closure came amid a broader stretch of declining foot traffic and corporate exits in downtown Baltimore, even as a scrappy pop-up across town found itself with more customers than it could handle.
Zhu bakes his cheesecakes out of commissary space he rents at La Chow, a shared commercial kitchen at 210 S. Central Ave that offers 24/7 access, storage, and prep equipment to food entrepreneurs, caterers, and food truck operators, according to La Chow. That kind of shared infrastructure lets small operators like Zhu manufacture goods without the upfront cost of building out their own kitchen. Èdo Cheesecake sells multiple varieties of the creamy Basque-style dessert, a category defined by its crustless composition and dark, caramelized top achieved through high-temperature baking, a style National Geographic traces to chef Santiago Rivera, who created it in 1988 at the bar-restaurant La Viña in San Sebastián, Spain.
Founders Met at Johns Hopkins
Zhu and Lyu met and studied together at Johns Hopkins Carey Business School before launching the company, and Zhu became solely responsible for Èdo Cheesecake after Lyu moved back to China. The pair emerged from an entrepreneurial ecosystem in which Johns Hopkins startup teams raise more than $400 million a year in venture funding, supported by university incubator programs that assist more than 140 student and faculty teams annually, according to Inc. Magazine. The business school also launched an eight-week Venture Strategy Program last fall with the Pava Marie LaPere Center for Entrepreneurship, pairing graduate students with early-stage ventures for hands-on consulting.
Despite the online fame, Zhu says he barely touches social media outside of work and messaging, and he eats few of his own products even as he bakes them daily. He has developed a loyal following at area farmers markets and shops, and Èdo Cafe's storefront at 608 S. Exeter St in Harbor East sells gluten-free Basque lava cheesecakes in flavors including crème brûlée, Biscoff, and taro, alongside whole cakes and slices, according to Atly.
Viral Fame, Physical Limits
The sudden demand has come at a physical cost. Zhu has severe back pain and struggles with the constant lifting required in kitchen work, a strain that has shaped his next move rather than simply energizing an expansion. He plans to close Èdo Cheesecake's Broadway Market pop-up later this week and wind down retail operations altogether, shifting instead toward shipping orders within the region.
Broadway Market itself, at 1640 Aliceanna St in Fells Point, is Baltimore's oldest existing public market building, dating to 1786, and regularly rotates monthly stalls to local food businesses through partnerships with kitchen incubators like La Chow. Even as that chapter closes, Zhu is looking for an angel investor to help scale Èdo Cheesecake, betting that the viral moment that sold out his stall in under an hour can also convince someone to bet on the business behind it.
