From the outside the Cheesecake Factory looks like a decent upper echelon chain restaurant. The parking lot is like a damned hamster maze, incredibly complex and difficult to navigate, with a fuckton of cars parked every which way. The first things that strike you as you enter the “Restaurant - Bakery - Bar” are the high ceilings and dimly lit atmosphere. This is all very calculated. The ambiance hides the tacky chalk drawn designs on the walls and the fake wood and marble. the entire design looks like and Egyptian tomb minus the hieroglyphs. Overall, an illusion of class.

Once we are seated a sycophantic waiter brings the menus and takes our drink order. The menu is longer than the Bible. It is filled with commercial advertisements and is too overwhelming to allow for a proper food choice. The overpriced drinks arrive and the waiter begins to aggressively push things that have been sitting in the back of the freezer - like the “special fish.” When pressed, he admits that some of the things he is recommending will be discontinued the following week. Very comforting. Finally we place our order: avocado egg rolls, tomato and mozzarella salad (minus blue cheese, plus mushrooms) and the Ranch House Burger (medium-rare). The drinking begins.

Their “unique and popular” avocado egg rolls look and taste like green alien shit. The drinks help to wash the taste down. The salad and burger arrive. The portions are enormous, fit for a starving sumo wrestlers. Never thought you could fuck up a salad that bad. Gotta love paying eight dollars for wilted lettuce, and to add insult to injury we were charged an extra dollar for swapping the blue cheese for the mushrooms. The burger is too big to comfortably hold in your hands and tastes mediocre. Although the food is average at best, eating as much as possible seems mandatory since this food does not deserve a spot in anyones fridge.

Finally we finish our meals and are looking forward to dessert. But wait, our once perky waiter, perhaps sensing our displeasure with the crappy meal, is nowhere to be seen. At long last he bounces up, “Would you like some dessert this evening? We have some great white chocolate..” At this point we’re so pissed off we order the chocolate mousse cheesecake to go. Another round of waiting and drinking ensues. Finally the check comes, we pay and leave.

The next day I had more gas than the Nazis and the CHEESECAKE was mediocre. WTF, I’ve had their cheesecake at Barnes and Noble and it was awesome. Turns out they don’t even sell the same cake at B&N that they do at the restaurant. Interesting, considering the B&N is, at most, 100 yards across the parking lot from the Cheesedick Factory. Next time I’ll hit the Wendy’s drive through on the way to picking up dessert at B&N and save seventy dollars.