The Cheesecake Factory

For some reason which is unfathomable to me, people like my restaurant reviews, so I will give you another one.

Yesterday, I had the pleasure of joining Greg Kowalski, author of Metro Milwaukee Today, for lunch. We agreed to meet at the Cheesecake Factory by Mayfair Mall. It is one of his favorite restaurants, and I wanted to see what all the hullabaloo was about.

We met there just as the lunch rush was ending, and were seated right away. I took a few moments to look around the restaurant. It was decorated in some sort of Egyptian/Byzantine design, and I wondered why they chose that theme. More on that later.

The menu was very expansive, and it would be hard for even the most finicky eater to find something that he or she didn't like. I ordered the lunch-portion of plain grilled salmon. After the waitress put in our order, she brought us a bowl of fresh bread. There was a selection of what appeared and tasted like French bread, as well as a dark rye bread, both of which were made in a more of a bread stick type of form. I opted for one of the French breads, and was pleased to find it still warm and rather tasty.

In a relatively short amount of time, the waitress brought our meals. The salmon fillet was accompanied by a serving of broccoli florets, french fries and, strangely, tartar sauce. I was kind of surprised by the tartar sauce. To me, putting tartar sauce on salmon would be akin to putting ketchup on a T-bone steak. I gave my bowl of tartar sauce to Greg, who had ordered a fish fry.

The salmon was very good. The portion was a little small for the price, but it was cooked to perfection. It was moist and delicately seasoned. (I am usually trepid about ordering salmon in most restaurant. They tend to drown the fish in one sauce or another and ruin the taste of the fish, in my humble opinion.)

It was also the best part of the meal. The broccoli was not fresh, and overcooked. It was soft and rather tasteless. The fries were OK, but way over-salted. Due to trying to keep from developing high blood pressure, which runs on both sides of my family, I tend to cook without any salt, unless it is included with some of the ingredients, and so I have developed a strong sensitivity to it. There was enough salt on those fries that I could barely taste the fries themselves.

As we were waiting for the bill, I took a closer look around. While the restaurant was bright and well lit, it was also rather busy with the decorations, including having the ceiling painted in what looked like something Michelangelo might have done...when he was three years old. To me, the gaudy decorations were rather ostentatious and distracting.

The service was prompt and attentive. While it was apparent that the management was trying to emphasize a personal feel, they obviously decided that the way to do that would be to have the wait staff follow a scripted set of lines, thereby destroying any attempts at homeyness, and making the poor waitress sound like a phone solicitor.

Overall, the restaurant was OK, but I don't know that I would go back there, unless it was part of a function. The food had its good and bad points, but it was on the expensive side, especially for what you get. It might be a nice restaurant for a young man that wanted to impress his date, or for an occasional change of pace, but for an established family with tight finances, it would not be a regular stop.