The Cheesecake Factory — Restaurant in Wauwatosa

I've always loved going to the Cheesecake Factory. The cheesecake is a bit expensive, but yummy, and the food & service has always been at least decent. Unfortunately our experience today was not a good one. First & foremost I do want to say the waitress Julie was wonderful. Pleasant, cheerful & did what she could to fix the issues. That said, I made reservations for brunch specifically to celebrate my birthday, but walked out without having been able to eat.

I ordered the Bacon & Avocado Benedict. The menu describes it as 'Poached Eggs with Crisp Bacon, Avocado, Tomato & Arugula. Covered with Calabrian Hollandaise on a Grilled English Muffin'. The word 'peppers' is nowhere in the description or on the menu. I am allergic to peppers. Apparently at Cheesecake Factory, 'Calabrian' refers to Calabrian chili peppers, not the region in Italy, and there was no indication of that being the case or any allergy notices. Luckily when my food arrived, I noticed there were peppers in the sauce before I took a bite. I immediately alerted Julie & apologized for not realizing 'Calabrian' meant 'peppers'. She agreed that it wasn't super clear & went back to the kitchen to ask them to remake the meal with plain hollandaise. She then brought out new silverware & a napkin for me to ensure there was no chance of cross contamination, which I honestly hadn't even thought of. She was great in taking charge immediately to correct the issue & making sure there would be no trace of peppers that could accidentally cause me harm.

So then we waited as the kitchen was preparing my new dish. And then waited. And waited some more. By the time the remade dish finally made it to our table, almost 35 min had passed. When I tried to cut into the English muffin, it was like cutting into cardboard. The food had sat for so long that the sauce & moisture from the eggs had soaked into the muffin, then congealed it into a solid block of rock hard bread-adjacent carb. Utterly inedible. So I figured ok, I'll just eat the rest... Nope. One bite of eggs was too much. Ice cold & absolutely vile. Ok, let's try the bacon. The bacon was WORSE. I dont know what kind of mad scientist voodoo it takes to manage to make soggy bacon, but that's what it was: soggy, limp, ice cold bacon. All in all I took two & a half bites of my remade meal before I gave up & said I was done. At this point I was so frustrated & hungry, I was almost in tears.

Julie came back to check on us & I told her I'm sorry, I'm not usually that person but I absolutely cannot eat that. There is no saving it. I just want to go. She immediately apologized again & went to talk to her manager. My meal was removed from the bill & they sent a peach lemonade with me to go.

Meanwhile, while all of this was happening on my side of the table, my husband ordered chicken & waffles, which he received. Unfortunately the waffle was undercooked, turning it into mush on his fork. He still ate it because he was hungry, but said it wasn't great. We did not mention this at all at the time because we were more focused on trying to fix the issues with my meal & get some food for me.

All in all, an extremely disappointing meal. While Julie was great, I was a little taken aback that the manager never bothered to approach us personally to check in, apologize, or even see what exactly was going on - they left 100% of the burden on Julie to deal with it. They obviously okayed the disaster meal to be taken off our bill, but that doesn't take much. There was zero effort or acknowledgement from the manager themselves, which honestly left a bit of a bad taste in our mouths.

To conclude: leaving your own birthday brunch still hungry is NOT an experience I would recommend, and Cheesecake Factory has lots of room to improve. Adding one more word to the menu would have prevented this entirely - instead of 'Calabrian Hollandaise', it should have said 'Calabrian Chili Hollandaise' or 'hollandaise with Calabrian peppers'. And management should be more involved. Do better!

Update: Management did email, apologize & send an...

We didn't want to wait 20 mins so we took the next available seating, unfortunately it was in the cramped seating area. There was one long booth and then tables arranged side by side with a chair on the other side. If you want to have a conversation with the person you're dining with, don't opt for this seating arrangement, you won't be able to hear each other because of all the other patrons seated so close by that you'd think they're all a part of your party. I didn't think it would be so bad (regretted it immediately after), so I opted to listen to my hunger pangs rather than my companion. We were celebrating a very special milestone and I was in charge of making plans... I wish the host would have specified the tightness of the seating arrangement to us.

(Also note: I had been trying to make reservations online for an hour and a half before we arrived, and the website kept looping me back to the sign-in page. I also called after this because I couldn't figure out what was going on with the website and was told we wouldn't have to wait if we walked in.)

Our server came to us in good time and we ordered mocktails, an appetizer and our entrees all together. I ordered the Chili-Crunch Shrimp Pasta and asked if they could sub bowtie pasta for the spaghettini and was told they could. I was so excited that The CF had this as a new offering on their menu.

My partner ordered the Jamaican Black Pepper Shrimp.

Our Spinach dip was delicious as were our mocktails. (Highly recommend the spinach dip, I could have ordered that again for my entree and been happy).

The presentation was beautiful, bowls were warm and everything smelled delicious.

I took a bite of my pasta and was immediately disappointed. I was expecting there to be a crunch from the chili clusters I could see and a hit of heat along with a savory kick from the garlic and I got nothing. I got sweetness, a nice chew from the pasta and the oiliness that you would expect from a vinegarette dressing, only warm. I think that's the best way to describe this pasta. It tasted like a slightly more savory version of a vinegarette dressing on pasta. It was like a warm bowtie pasta salad with shrimp.

I should have returned my plate but I couldn't find my server in time and I felt awkward because the restaurant was so packed. When I finally saw her I asked her for more of the chili crunch sauce and maybe some hot sauce. She very nicely brought me both, but unfortunately it just made my pasta oilier and didn't add anything I was hoping it to add.

At $20+ I was incredibly disappointed and I ate a bowl of cereal when I got home.

My partner loved his entree and I tried some of it and it tasted just as I had thought it would. The plantains were I thought the best part of his dish.

I usually enjoy cheesecake factory (especially the delicious Branzino I miss so so much), but this time I was really disappointed. What was supposed to be a celebratory evening ended in disappointment, especially since we couldn't have dessert. (No one was nice enough to let us know any cheesecake that didn't have gelatin in it, even after we had asked so we could...

I can't say much negative about the atmosphere and the service, because both of those were great. The server was good and we had no problems there. This was my first time dining at any Cheesecake factory with a large group, and previously I have only been a handful of times with two people. This time we had 8. We ended up with a bill for about $360 for food that was mediocre at best. And the upcharge on the drinks was outrageous! The deceptive practice of not pricing drinks on the menus needs to go, end rant. Charged $8.50 for an unpriced lemonade for my daughter... for a lemonade? $4.25 for fountain drinks? $18 for two unpriced specialty cocktails that had almost no alcohol in them at all. I realize restaurant make money on the drinks, and I get the practice of up charging... to an extent..... but $18 for a maybe 4 oz drink as a hidden charge is (my opinion) predatory. My daughter didn't eat her Fettuccini because the noodles had a weird texture. Maybe we are used to cheap noodles, but mushy on the outside and al dente in the middle did seem weird to me when I tasted it as well. I had the Shrimp Scampi and Steak Diane which was not good for the most part. The mashed potatoes had a good taste, but appeared to be over mashed and were creamy -vs- fluffy. The 3 tiny little morsels of steak were tough, dry, and tasted with a hint of being burnt. They were cooked medium like I asked but must have been from poor cuts because it was a tough chew. I had to laugh when the waitress made a special trip to bring me a steak knife for the small bitesize pcs, but ended up using it anyway so I wouldn't choke. Maybe she knew. 3 little shrimp (yes only 3) were OK, but really didn't feel like this was a $27 plate at a chain restaurant even if the steak had been good. My son loved his chicken sandwich and other daughter loved her kid's pizza flatbread... 3 other members of my party had different Pasta dishes which they said were ok, but not great. One other member had the petite filet which he said was good, but for $40, it better be. I just can't help but feel taken. For what we paid, the meal should have been great, and we left feeling like we wasted our money. Even the cheesecake we got to go after wasn't all that great, but maybe it was because the meal was disappointing. I will probably stick to date night 2 people meals here from now if that... but I believe we could have gotten much better meal for a more reasonable price at one of the non-chain local restaurants. Maybe being able to seat 8 people on demand during peak hours should have been a sign to...