The Cheesecake Factory — Restaurant in Raleigh

I recently received a $250 Door Dash gift card as a thanks for my volunteer work. The caveat: it expired at the end of the year and had to be used at a restaurant. Yikes. My roommate and I are in the process of moving soon so we decided on the Cheesecake Factory because we could get a variety of food that would either freeze well or be good over several days.

We ordered: Thai Chicken Wraps Meatballs x2 Macaroni and Cheese Balls x4 Margherita Flatbread x2 Crispy Brussels Sprouts Mexican Street Corn Korean Fried Cauliflower

Godiva Chocolate Cheesecake Classic Basque Cheesecake Pineapple Upside Down Cheesecake Adam’s Peanut Butter Cup Fudge Ripple Cheesecake

The order left the restaurant and arrived a scant 12 minutes later. Amazing time made by our very nice driver, Kyle. Now to the food.

Where to begin… Let’s start with The Good. You might think that the best menu item would be one of the cheesecakes but you would be wrong. The standout of the day was the Street Corn. Wow! Who knew that could be so amazingly good?!!!! Who knew lime would enhance an ear of corn? I will never eat corn the regular way ever again. This arrived very warm, which was just fine, with this thick, creamy, lime-rich sauce clinging to the corn. My tastebuds were singing Hallelujah! You’ve got to try it!

Next up, the Macaroni Balls. These were crispy and tasty but arrived lukewarm warm. I know they would have been even better hot and since we got four orders of them (don’t judge me!) I know I’ll find out tomorrow that that is true. They came with a pick sauce, reminiscent of a light, thinned out tomato sauce and I don’t think it added anything to the balls. So I after one taste I left it alone.

The Meatballs. Ah the whipped ricotta and the clean marinara sauce, which I don’t usually like, added to the overall enjoyment of these balls which stood fine on their own but man, oh, man that sauce kicked up a few notches. Get these in-house or be prepared to reheat them as they arrived nearly cold.

And now, The Bad The Korean Cauliflower was a cold, soggy mess. What a waste of money! Maybe eating it in-house would be better but this turned me off completely and I’ll never trust them for it again. You want good spicy fried cauliflower, go to Firebirds. It’s outstanding… spicy, crispy, delicious!

Middle of the Road we have the Thai Chicken Lettuce Wraps and Crispy Brussels Sprouts. Neither of us liked the sweet Brussels sprouts but that’s us. Seems they were prepared well. The chicken was fine but nothing to write home about.

And the cheesecake. Oh, glorious Cheesecake. The Classic Basque Cheesecake was like the perfect plain cheesecake. It came covered in fresh berries, which I didn’t order so… bonus. The whipped cream just wasn’t necessary this was so good on its own.

The Pineapple Upside Down Cheesecake had a brightness to its taste that was delightful and I can see ordering this again. It’s a mix of pineapple cheesecake and pineapple upside down cake. ’Nuff said. Yum

The Godiva Chocolate Cheesecake was a creamy, chocolatey mouthful of Heaven. It comes with a square of Godiva chocolate and the only downside is they buried it under the whipped cream! It’s in a gold wrapper so that was a bit of a mess.

The Adam’s Peanut Butter Cup Fudge Ripple Cheesecake was for my roommate as I hate all things nutty. We each had about a one-inch slice from each cheesecake with her eating nearly all of her peanut one on top of all that! So, I’m guessing it was really good. She stopped with only about two bites left and she just couldn’t finish, LOL. Yeah. If you like buts, this might be perfect for you.

Cheesecake Factory, better in house but, overall, not too bad...

Please do not go to the Cheesecake Factory at Crabtree. Our family of five, who typically love the Cheesecake factory went this morning. The hostess was kind, we were seated in 15 minutes all ok there. Over 15 minutes later a waiter said hello. He took drink orders. 20 minutes later my husband received a cold (literally) black coffee with side of cream and daughter about 30 after ordering received her warm capuccino. These things aren't great but we're more excited about the food. So the pancakes for both daughters are served . They each kept adding "syrup" from their little syrup vessel bc they couldn't taste the syrup. One daughter then realized out loud and said, "oh it's not syrup , they gave us butter by accident." We asked our server to bring them syrup bc they rec'd butter by accident. The server then said, "Oh we make our syrup with butter so sometimes it tastes extra buttery sorry about that." To try to snap out of shock to that ansser I thought he really didn't understand, so I poured the "syrup" onto the white plate to show him, that it was truly just butter, clear yellow. I tasted it, said, "it's butter". Again, asked him just to get what they consider their syrup. He then said, "Like I said we make our syrup with butter so sometimes it's a little extra buttery." I'm curious and ask," well if your syrup is butter can you bring them a side of syrup? "He says yes, "but apologies the only syrup we have is our to go syrup and it is Sugar free.". I asked he get the manager. She comes to the table and loudly and condescendinly says, "Like your server has already told you. we do make our syrup with butter and that is all we have. Like he told already told you, it can be buttery. But, we want you to be happy," She proceeds to look at the girls and says very matter of factly. That since their "pancakes are soaking in butter they can make them each more pancakes." My daughters have the gift of feeling guilty when they did nothing wrong except in the case they spoke up about preferring syrup to drawn butter on their pancakes. The girls each say, "no no it's ok we are fine." They of course did not eat the cold soaked pancakes and did not eat anymore of anything. We also left without ordering any cheesecake slices to go (a first!). We paid over 32 dollars for ruined pancakes. 8 dollars for 4 pieces of undercooked bacon. My husband's burger/s sauce had no flavor and was not served hot , however he liked the bun. My shrimp tacos were cold. Our son did like the frenchdip burger. I waited tables through school and am old. I have NEVER seen a manager take zero responsibility for an issue w/ an unhappy (rightfully so) customer- Cheesecake Factory needs to have syrup! Where I come from when coffee is 30 minutes late and delivered cold and pancakes do not get eaten bc there is no syrup, we remove the ticket item so the guests feel heard and not responsible for paying for item delivered not as advertised or simply unsatsifactory. The understood and validated customers will proceed to buy 60 dollars of cheesecake and leave happy. It's not about the money as much as it is about the attitude of the manager, lack of respect. There was really nothing that went well outside of the kind hostess and our waiter trying to explain why many customers feel the "syrup" is too buttery. I say it's because it's butter. - But, even if there is a good reason the butter drifts to the top as vinegar and oil separate too. Let's learn how to shake up the urn or buy syrup in a bottle and realize, the customer is usually right!- and even if and when they are to be wrong, one can still be Kind! Southpoint Cheesecake Factory, we'll never go to Crabtree Cheesecake factory...

I don’t understand how this place stays busy. The past three times I’ve been, I’ve never had a great experience but today was the worst. The past three times the service was slow but our waitress today made those servers look like the elite of the elite. Food was mediocre those times except for a chicken dish I got that’s advertised as the most popular on their menu (forget the name, but it was pretty good).

I let my daughter pick where she wanted to eat today. Much to my dismay, she chose Cheesecake Factory. I don’t hate the food, but like I said, previous experiences have not been great and service was slow. And today, I needed a quick lunch. I was hoping for the best. We got seated immediately. Took 20 minutes for anyone to come to our table. We were actually talking about leaving at that time so I told the waitress I didn’t know if we were going to stay but my daughter wanted to stay. I knew that the long wait to even get our drink orders was a bad sign and I knew how it was going to play out and I was right. The waitress was apologetic and said she saw other waiters going by us and she assumed they were taking care of us. But if that was the case, why did she even come to our table to begin with? She was just a horrible waitress. She got our drink orders and brought out our drinks and bread. She asked if we needed more time to look at the menu and she probably didn’t like that I said, “no we’ve had over 20 minutes to look at the menu”. We ordered. Five minutes passed and I turned on my stopwatch on my phone. The water was so bad I couldn’t drink it so I was waiting for her to come by so I could exchange it. We were starving.

15 minutes later, I went to the hostess stand with my water and asked if they could get me a sprite. She said I would need to ask my waitress. Well, no crap, I know how this works. I hadn’t seen her in 15 minutes and the only people walking by my table was the hostess seating other guests. She asked if I wanted a manager but I said “don’t worry about it” out of frustration. If I was that hostess, I would have went and got the customer a sprite myself, but these people just don’t care. She was smiling at her phone when I went up there so they weren’t busy. This is not a post about her though because she was accommodating and nice. 23 minutes passed before our waitress breezed by our table and said she was going to check our food. I asked could I change the drink and she did go ahead and bring that. About 10 more minutes passed and no food so we got up and told the hostess they could cancel our order. She asked if I wanted to speak to the manager and I told her they weren’t going to do anything about it and left. Once we got near the food court in the mall, I couldn’t help myself and called and spoke with the manager. He was nice and said our food was ready and we could come back and eat it or he would box it up for us to take home. I said no because I don’t trust anyone there that they haven’t spit on or tampered with the food in any way. Not saying they did, but I definitely didn’t trust that horrible waitress. That’s why I didn’t touch the sprite.

They have the cheesecakes down pat, but they aren’t even made there, they just slice them for you. That’s the only thing I may buy there, is a cheesecake to go. The food is decent, but for me personally, the service is bad. And to be honest, I know no one there really cares but they’ll probably put an apology comment below. How about this, instead of apologizing, do better. They wasted an hour of my time. I definitely won’t be eating at this location again. They need some...