The Cheesecake Factory — Restaurant in Milwaukie

I come here to this location with my good friend every time I'm in town to visit and I'm generally very pleased with the food, extremely happy with the service, and only minorly annoyed by the temperature of the restaurant itself.

For some reason it's always a little cold here and wearing shorts in the summer with no cardigan to cover bare shoulders isn't really the best idea.

Every time we eat here our server is genuinely upbeat and accommodating, amiable, patient with how often we need another minute with the menu because my friend and I spend so much time chatting and catching up that we forget to pause and read, and personable.

A consistent favorite of ours is the Steak Diane and while we've branched out to other dishes that's one we continue revisiting. I'm not a fan of pepper generally, but I find that it's not excessive and isn't the only seasoning they use to flavor the dish so it's a simplistic meal with comforting flavors and not boringly "on trend" with so many places that think pepper is the new salt.

The Shrimp Scampi is decent and creamy without being gloppy, but while the tomatoes are bright and fresh, the shrimp cooked and seasoned really well, and the noodles just on the softer side of al dente, the noodles themselves are bland and the garlic pieces are slightly flavorless despite not being cooked to the point of mush.

The Chicken Madeira could use a bit of salt, but that's what the shaker on the table is for, I suppose, and the texture overall is fine.

One thing to note, though, that I found quite surprising was that when you order the combination plates they alter the original dish. You of course don't get the same size portion as in the full-size meal, but they don't tell you that they will omit ingredients too.

On this occasion I was trying to decide between Steak Diane and the Shrimp with Angel Hair and saw the combination option with the Shrimp Scampi. According to the description of Shrimp Scampi on the same page it would be an adequate substitute for the Shrimp with Angel Hair so I ordered that. Except when it arrived there was no pasta at all, just a whole lot of sauce with three shrimp on top and a line of mashed potatoes to keep the saucy dish from spreading to my steak.

With three small steak medallions each the size of a 50 cent coin I was very disappointed in the amount of food on a $25.99 plate. My server was extremely kind when I asked about the omission and offered to bring me some noodles, which I accepted. Still not happy paying that much for so little food though, especially the measly protein amounts.

We didn't order dessert this time because we were a little too full after ordering boba while waiting for our table to be ready, but there are so many delicious options that I'm absolutely sure any lover of dense, flavorful cheesecake will find something to appease their taste buds...

"You can't sit here!"

Some of the staff and management at this location have basically devolved into a "Mean Girls" meme.

I've eaten at this location on and off for years, most recently just a couple of months ago when my sister and I were celebrating our birthday and previously would have had some nice things to say about it. After the experience yesterday (mixed with the complex advertising other businesses that have been closed for months) it honestly made my partner and I decide we don't even want to visit the entire Clackamas Town Center complex as a whole ever again.

Normally when offered the choice of bar seating or regular seating I'll take regular seating and wait a bit. Occasionally I'll do the bar depending on how it looks. Every single time I've ever been in there I've been told the bar has "open seating" including yesterday. Yesterday we decided to do the bar seating since we'd waited a little late before deciding to snag lunch.

We went to an open table in the bar area and sat down. Immediately a member of staff told us that these seats weren't part of the open seating in the bar, which was immediately confusing. The bar is either open seating, or it's not. We were informed that there is open seating...but not for every seat in the bar area and that we'd have to move immediately.

We decided to just leave instead and contact a manager later rather than let it turn into a scene.

After exiting the restaurant, I called and spoke with a manager who made it blatantly obvious that they genuinely didn't even care to take the call. They were combative and argumentative and blamed the staff for their policies.

They said that the solution isn't to make the supposedly open seating bar area actually open seating or to cordon off the area to make it clear that it's not open seating. Nope. According to this manager the solution thus far is to tell staff to specify what they mean by open seating is actually specifically designated seating and to 'educate' customers' when they come in as to what their version of open seating in a specific section of their restaurant actually means. All it means is that they saw an open seat in the designated seating section of the bar and are indicating such to you. They aren't telling you that you can sit at any seat that appears available in the bar section.

I've never had this experience before at any other Cheesecake Factory location, and that's most likely because no one at those other locations tries to take away almost half of the seating in the bar area and pretend it's not bar seating or argues with the customers about things that are fully within the control of the restaurant itself.

I'd say they should try to do better, but I don't think the management in this location even...

07/06/19: 3.0 out of 5 - It was my first time to The Cheesecake Factory (TCF) restaurant in Clackamas/Happy Valley area. Now the last time I was at any Cheesecake Factory was well over 15 years ago...maybe even 20 years ago in Southern California.

My Father-in-law wanted to go to TCF with the family. I just happen to be, in a sense, collateral damage in this decision.

As a fair warning, don't expect to be seated right away on a Saturday and with more than 6 individuals in your party. The host(ess) told us there would be a 50 minute wait, and this was at 8pm. You'll get a little buzzer thing that has a very, very short range. So, don't go to far...better yet, don't go sitting outside.

So come 9:25pm TCF finally sat us because they were waiting for a particular booth to open up, which we stated we would rather have a table to make it easier for the elders. It was apparent, one of the host(ess) wasn't listening to our request. Another host understood our frustration and quickly tried his best to get us into a table. His actions and level of service alone bumped my review up a star.

After being resituated to a table that was suitable, it took another 12 minutes for being addressed by our food service person, followed by another 5 minutes for water and bread, and then followed by a few more minutes to get our drinks and dinner order in.

Food came out, and it was okay. My Father-in-law and I had the Rib Eye Steak dinner, my wife had the Shrimp Scampi, Mother-in-law had some sort of Chicken with Ribbon pasta, sister-in-law had something... can't remember what it was, brother-in-law had a pork chop dinner, and the nephew had fish and chips.

Later, my Father-in-law wanted us to get desserts. I shared my Tiramisu, which wasn't bad. Kudos to that! We practically left close to midnight...not exactly how we wanted to spend our evening.

The food, for what you pay for it, was just not up to measure. It could have and should have been better for TCF and for the price.

To be honest, TCF rides on the looks of the establishment, which is nice for most restaurant standards, but, although it is out of the staffs control, the noise level is at an ear ringing decibal...sorry I didn't order tinnitus with my dinner and dessert. The food is okay. The staff was okay with the exception the one host and our food service person. There's definitely room for big improvements.

So, one question I often ask myself is, "Would I go back?" I suppose some day I may be collateral damage again, but I would prefer not to.

Don't take my words for it though. If you had never tried TCF, then I would end this review with this, try it once and decide for...