Food costs are rising. A meal at Morton's is now $200 without wine. P F Chang's is shrinking their portion sizes to keep up. Even a McBreakfast doesn't leave much change out of $5, yet the Fed tells us inflation's under control. Really Ben Bernanke? Really? And when was the last time anyone had a payrise?
Well, in the same way that thinking about kittens pushing around balls of wool brings a child-like smile to your face, Cheesecake Factory has the capacity to lift us above he banal-yet-important facts of our current depression, and show us a world hitherto only experienced by visitors of Willie Wonka's Chocolate Factory. Actually, I feel myself rushing towards a hugely absurd generalization that maybe all things with Factory in the title are good? Yes, of course they are.
The food menu is basically a phonebook. If you have reservations at 7.00pm, get there by 6.15pm to get a head start on what's on offer. These guys can cook anything from pizza to steak to pasta to salad to sushi to fish... oh, and save some room for cheesecake. Which you won't be able to do since every dish is half the size of the table. A family of four could share an entree and not need feeding for a week.
When you see those TV commercials about how donating $5 will feed a child in Africa for a month, let me tell you - they're not sending dried food packages or rice, they're actually going to the nearest Cheesecake Factory and sending over an order of macaroni cheese airmail. It simply makes more economic sense, and the poor kid gets to enjoy once the best meals anyone has ever had.
I tend to escape with spending $40 for two, but the pile of doggy bags jamming up the trunk of the car will see us through lunch for a few days too. I was lucky enough to glimpse inside the kitchen of my local Cheesecake, and the dozen or so guys in there are the hardest working people on the planet. One moment they're frying bacon, the next they're tending to the Hibachi Steak and putting strawberries on the Cheesecake of the Day,while checking the timing on the pasta pomodoro. I was expecting to see chains around their ankles but actually they all looked pretty happy, oblivious to the fact they'll be burned out by 30.
