Lunch at the Cheesecake Factory

We went to the Cheesecake Factory for lunch the other day. Man that place is popular. It was a Thursday at 1pm and we still had to wait to be seated. It’s located near a mall so it's a nice place to go after/before shopping.

Something to keep us going was a sourdough roll and honey rye(?) bread. It was nice and warm when it came to our table.

The menu is your basic American spread from burgers, salads, to pasta and pizza. The appetizers sounded a lot more interesting, so we ordered 3 appetizers: Firecracker salmon rolls, sweet-corn tamale cakes, fire-roasted fresh artichoke.

The firecracker salmon rolls were the best! It was salmon rolled up in spinach and fried in the shape of firecrackers. Crispy on the outside like good lumpia (a Filipino dish) and served with sweet/sour sort of sauce. It was served with red cabbage coleslaw dressed in your basic oriental dressing. I could’ve had twice as much and eaten that as a lunch.










The corn tamale cakes tasted as I expected and were good. However I should have thought before ordering if it would mix with the other appetizers, which it didn’t. Separately I think it would have been a better choice. The presentation however was quite pretty.











The fire-roasted artichokes were unique. Not something you usually see on a menu. The garlic dip was an aioli (fancy word for mayo) which was tasty. The artichokes were cooked through and “fire roasted” meaning chared, and then dressed with a balsamic dressing. I’ve never had balsamic on artichokes before but that was a good combo. The only thing most restaurant do when serving artichokes is they overcook them to a mushy stage rather than al dente. I guess this is because someone yanking a artichoke leaf from their mouth to get the meat off the leaf looks a little primitive. If the artichokes weren’t over cooked this would have been a perfect dish as I would be more than willing to sacrifice eating appearance for good food any day!









Our server was pretty attentive. I think she came to check on us like 5 times. Also she brought out hot towels and lemon after eatting the artichokes.