The Cheesecake Factory — Restaurant in Durham

We went about 7 minutes or so before our waitress attended us. I gave her the benefit of the doubt, perhaps she had many tables, etc. She asked us for our drink orders, and didn't ask us about appetizers, which is fine, figured she'd be back shortly with our drinks and we can ask her, then.

We'd asked for a Hot Chocolate, a Bloody Mary, and a Shirley Temple. 2 of these things I understood may take a minute. She brought us the Shirley Temple in good time with some bread, then took about 15 minutes for the other two drinks to arrive. I don't mind the time that it took, other than the fact that she didn't take our order during that time... no apps, entrees, etc.

Once we have our drinks she finally asks for apps, and we're told that they ran out of their Fried Mac N Cheese Bites... No big deal, shit happens. We put in our entree orders: 3 burgers.

This is when was our patience began to run thin. I'd asked our waitress if I could potentially get both of my Double Smash Burger patties swapped to the Impossible faux meat patties, and she said she'd ask the kitchen and find out if they could make this substitution. It was at least 15 minutes before she got back to me on this, and told me that they could NOT sub it, which was fine, just seemed like 15 minutes was a little long for such a simple question. During this time, there were 2 separate parties near us, who came in at least 5-10 minutes after we did, who had already had their drinks and orders taken! One of them was already receiving some of their food, which certainly seemed curious as all we ordered was a few burgers. Still, I was giving her the benefit of the doubt.

While we're waiting for our entrees, she's tending to 2 other tables much more attentively than us. She may have asked us if we needed anything, refills, etc. ONCE while we were waiting for our food, which is unacceptable, considering that our food didn't arrive until about 8:45, which is insane for 3 burgers: an hour wait. The 2 other parties that came after us got everything they ordered AFTER US long before us. The father of one of the parties kept looking at our table, I'm sure wondering why we hadn't been served.

When the food finally arrived I asked the person who brought it (who wasn't our waitress), if there was some issue in the kitchen that had held up production. She said that they were very busy. I told her that 2 other parties near us had already received their entrees. She observed that they all had pasta, while we had burgers; saying that the two entree types are prepared by separate divisions in the kitchen. Looking around, I hardly saw anyone else that had burgers; not to mention, it being nearly 9PM, the restaurant had thinned considerably.

When they arrived, the burger we ordered with cheese and mayo came without either, and the one we ordered with cheese, lettuce, and mayo came without the mayo... This seems like very simple stuff to mess up, given the thinning or customers and the simplicity of our orders. Before we could even spot the errors, the food runner had ran off, and our waitress didn't come for a few more minutes, further delaying us receiving our proper orders.

Our waitress, Jasmine T, was extremely inattentive to us. If we needed something we had to resort to flagging her down, while an adjacent party received excellent service from their waitress. It wasn't until I complained about the amount of time the food took to arrive that Jasmine apologized about the poor speed of service, which is all it would've taken for me to not have composed this essay: the slightest acknowledgement of hey, things are slow right now, I apologize, is there anything I can do in the meantime to take care of you?

This was the first, and hopefully the only time in my life I'll ever consider not tipping. I gave her more than she deserved, and should have probably given the person who brought our food out to us the same amount, as she did just as much and it wasn't even her job.

If you're in a hurry, or expect to receive competent service in a timely manner,...

Giving a one-star due to the poor service received, specifically from the manager, Olivia. She was very apathetic towards us.

When we ordered, we went ahead and placed a to-go order for my brother so that it would be ready by the time we finished our food. To specify, I placed an order of Chicken Alfredo for dine-in as well as a to-go order of Chicken Alfredo. Before we received our food for dine-in, we received the to-go order which wasn’t an issue, we just placed it to the side. A minute later, another server comes out saying that she has our to-go order, leaving us confused as we had already received the order so we sent the extra order back.

After that specific server left, a few minutes later, she returned with our food we had ordered for dine-in. Once I stirred my pasta, I noticed that the standard dinner portion that I have previously consistently experienced, especially in regards to my last two visits this past month, was a lot smaller, resembling their lunch portion. As shown in my photo, this was the portion I received before the singular bite I took.

I cannot speak for surety if they just put a little bit of the second mistaken to-go order on my plate and pushed it out but I can definitely speak on Olivia’s poor attitude and management skills.

Initially, I requested to receive a small amount of noodles to at least fill my plate up to somewhat of the dinner portion - to which our server said that her manager said it would be an up charge. At first I took it on the chin, as I did not want to pay extra for noodles that were supposed to be in this specific portion. I was very discontent with this as I have ordered this exact meal several times before, frequenting this exact establishment.

At this point, I didn’t even want the extra noodles, so in my request to the manager, I just requested that my meal be adjusted to the pricing of their lunch serving - as that was what I received. While speaking with Olivia, she was very apathetic - appearing bored with the conversation. Her facial expressions, tone, and body language gave off that she already had her mind set on not giving me any accommodations on my meal as she continuously cut in with excuses and responses as soon as she thought I was done speaking.

Her reasoning for me receiving such a small portion was that it 1) was the standard dinner size and 2) they had weighed it before it went out and 3) that my plate had actually weighed more than it was supposed to (this was definitely a lie as the to-go order weighed more than my plate). She continued to argue to this reasoning even after I pointed out that my mother’s portion was bigger than what I received despite her taking several bites of her meal and that the portion size of the same exact meal that we had ordered to-go weighed heavier. She did not care at all when I attempted to reason with her - pointing out that she could check the cameras and it would showcase that I did not do anything to my food to warrant it fill up less than half of the plate and that in my experiences these past few months, this exact meal was more than I had received.

Her lack of consideration and attempt to rectify the situation was distasteful. I have never received such service from Durham’s Cheesecake Factory as I have tonight. I wasn’t asking for a meal compensation, just a rectification that remedied the meal that I received. Even an apologetic attitude or response would have remedied the situation even if she didn’t honor any of my requests. Her attitude made the experience much worse, it is clear that she did not care for our patronage.

In hindsight, I now I am thinking that I should have just been dishonest and taken that extra to-go order. I am severely disappointed in the service I received tonight and management’s response. I have no plans on returning or recommending this location to others anytime sooner.

Please note, my mother’s food was this size after taking several bites of her food. The picture of my food, the chicken Alfredo, was what I had received from...

This last experience I had was just very bad, I did reservations my table was not ready me and the family had to wait for 20 plus minutes to be seated and as we are waiting, I counted 3 different parties be seated, Mean while, we had reservations, than it gets worse, we finally get seated, Our waiter was horrible we set without refills and empty cups numerous times, I had wave him down to get him to give us refills and he would literally walk by us and not refill the cups seeing they are empty, asked for more bread never got that, asked for napkins never got that, asked for butter never got that, than when out meals finally came, my meal was not made correctly I barely hade any shrimp, chicken and broth for my gumbo the portion looked like it was a half portion of someone else plate that was already eaten. So, because my waiter was no where to be seen, I had to wave a different waiter down to express my dissatisfaction, she had a manager come to the table and I explained to him and showed him my gumbo , he said he was going to have the kitchen make me another, I waited and waited and waited, no gumbo came out 40 min go by and I told the waiter just forget about it and I was going to pay for my check (the other food) and leave because my other family member had already finished eating and I was still waiting my gumbo that NEVER came out. No one came back to check on the table and ask what the problem was it was as if they did not care, I left hungry basically. So next called to speak to a manager in a couple days about my visit the lady manager I spoke with apologized and said she will speak to the waiter and staff and offered to send me a gift card, she took my name and tried to put in my gift card request and told me she had a problem doing it, cause a message comes up to send any of my concerns to corporate, She said she sent it to corperate and they will contact me to provide my gift card and resolve my issue and she apologized that she could not resolve it for me immediately. Corporate never called, I have to this day called corporate myself and left 3 messages and also send a message on line and no one has yet to send me a gift card or contact me about my horrible experience. I do not understand why if a local store could of handled my problem why it required for my complaint to be send to corporate who has basically ignored me and not returned any calls or messages. This is very unprofessional and whoever that handles guest services is not doing there jobs they need to be very careful who they hire at these corporate jobs because a customer concerns should never be ignored and not contacted back, I hope someone high up reads this message and coach the guest services team on how to respond in timely manner to complaints and concerns. It been going on two weeks and I have yet to receive any resolution from my...