A Newbie to the Cheesecake Factory

I heard great things about the cheesecake factory, but I never got the chance to go there. One Saturday afternoon, my friends and I made our way to the Cheesecake Factory (931 Haddonfield Rd, Cherry Hill). The first thing I saw when I entered was the assortment of cheesecakes behind the glass counter. The restaurant was also selling salad dressing but who cares about that when there’s cheesecake!

The restaurant had an extensive menu, but there were only a number of things I can eat that were not salads. They had a SkinnyLicious menu with foods 590 calories and under. I opted to go with the Skinny Veggie Burger made of couscous and brown rice. See below for the picture and review.

Skinny Veggie Burger

The Skinny Veggie Burger came with a side garden salad. It was just a plain salad and there was no real dressing. It appears like fresh crushed up tomatoes was the dressing. I guess this wasn’t on the skinny menu for nothing. The veggie burger came on a small bun with mayonnaises, lettuce, tomato, onions, and pickles and ketchup on the side. When the burger first arrived it reminded of meatloaf. On top of the burger was some kind of gravy like sauce. In my opinion, the sauce had a meaty aroma. For the most part, the burger was okay. I didn’t really like the texture. I was hoping it would have the texture of meatloaf since it looked like meatloaf, but the consistency was much more mushier. If I squeeze the sandwich too much/too hard, I can definitely see the burger falling apart. For the taste, it was average. It had favor, but there wasn’t anything special about the favor to me. No special herbs or seasoning that stuck out. There wasn’t any unexpected kick to the burger. Maybe I am just expect too much. I would give the burger a 3 out of 5.

Of course, we have cheesecake for dessert, but I was in a trance with the cheesecake and I forgot to take pictures. I got the carrot cheesecake. It was good and more on the sweet side and definitely tasted more like a cheesecake than a carrot cake. I think I was anticipating more of a carrot cake with a hint of cheesecake. My friend got Chris’ outrageous cheesecake. It was quite heavenly. It was layers of goodness- moist cake cake, chewy brownie, coconut pecan frosting and creamy chocolate chip coconut cheesecake.  It tasted better than my carrot cake cheesecake. I should have gotten the same one as her.

Overall, my experience at Cheesecake was great. The food was good and the wait for it was shorter then I expected. I thought the wait time to be seat, to be served, and to have our food come out would be forever considering how busy the restaurant was, but surprising it was not.  The wait to be seated was only about 15 minutes. Our food came out pretty fast. Our waiter was also great. He was one of the best servers ever. He was very nice, knowledgeable of the menu, and checked up on us.  But his check ups on us weren’t too excessive. I had experienced servers who would check up on us every 5 minutes, which can be annoying. This waiter checked up on us like 3-4 times to refill water and ask how things were which was reasonable. I am definitely going back to try other things on the menu and other cheesecakes. Hopefully, they are going to open the one in Philly very soon.