WHEN MY HUSBAND, Alex, and I first met in the Basque Country in 2006, we drank a lot of coffee together. In bakeries and bars all around the Parte Vieja in Donostia-San Sebastián, a coastal city known as “the pearl of the Cantabrian Sea,” we threw back countless espressos on the way to and from our daily double shifts at Alex’s pintxos bar and restaurant, La Cuchara de San Telmo.
But one coffee date stands out: when Alex invited me to La Viña, birthplace of the locally beloved cheesecake that was (little did we know at the time) poised to set off something of a global cheesecake revolution. We sat at a small table, under shelves lined with spring-form
