Cheesecake Factory is a prime example of why other countries hate us

So I ate at The Cheesecake Factory for the first time last night. It was ok, but I kept thinking this is why other countries hate us. It's pretty typical american restaurant, but they seem to always be located in malls. In this case, it's one of those restaurants at the mall where the outside of the place looks different from the rest of the mall. It's more posh, opulent, and over-done (and for no good reason).

By the time we got seated all three of the employees we had spoken to had warned us about the huge portion sizes. Be sure to save room for desert, they all reminded us. Cheesecake is what we're known for.

So far, their niche is huge portions. We get the menu, and it's a book. They have every type of food you can imagine: steaks, stir fry; pad thai; cajun; pizza; sandwiches, seafood. Like they took all the popular dishes from every type of restaurant and blanded (yeah, I mean blanded) them into one vanilla place. But with huge portions.

The place is loud and full of people with too much money. I saw a salad go by that would feed a family of four in most parts of the world. I've never seen such a shameless display of excess.

Having said that, the cheesecake was pretty damned good. The rest of the meal was mediocre. Oh, and here's a personal gripe: a company that has every type of food you can imagine only has one type of tea; unsweetened. What a crock. This is the south. People drink sweet tea here.

Glad to see this generating some discussion. Pretty good discussion as far as I can tell.

I would definitely prefer Whitehead's cheesecake vision.

Devin pretty mcuh hit what I was going for. I will say that I would normally not choose a chain like this, but we don't eat out as much as we used to, and we wanted to see what the fuss was about. I might pick up a piece of cheescake to go in the future, but I don't think I'll eat there again.

I kept thinking of a news story I heard on the radio about this guy who fed his family rat curry. It's the only protein they get in their diet, and he's only able to provide that on rare occasions.

Thanks, Adam Warren. It's been a while since I got on a rant about something, and it's nice to see people responding.

Thedudeabides, I'd definitely rather live in a place of excess, too. Definitely better than the alternative. I'm going to pretend the rest of your post is a joke (I'm pretty sure it is).

I think the things I cited about the cheesecake factory are indiciative of things that people hate us for. Our policies either reflect or enable those things to continue. And while I think anyone would prefer to be able to work hard and reap the benefits, I believe you can do that without being wantonly wasteful and blindly ignoring the effects of your actions on others.

Yeah, we were at Crabtree. We didn't really wait that long, like 20 minutes or so. It took about 30 minutes after we ordered to get our food.

No way I'm getting valet at the mall either. I think they build those lots a little too small to make valet a valid choice. Of course, that lot was too small before they had valet, but other malls do it that way.

Like I said, the cheesecake is good. And it's set up so you don't have to wait to get one to go. I would do that again. It's curious that the cheesecake portions weren't that much larger than most restaurants.

I went back. I felt like Devin at Olive Garden, but I went back.

I got cheesecake to go. It wasn't as good as I remembered.

Between the first time I was there, and the most recent time I actually had cheesecake in NY a couple of times. CF is the little debbie of cheesecake.

The Mexican family has more soda than the Americans. That's because Mexican coke tastes so much better.