Cheesecake is a beautiful thing, and CF smothers it in over-gilding. The smooth, creamy, tangy goodness of cheesecake is lost under all that caramel, Oreos, over-sweet glazes, chocolate, nuts, etc.

This may be heresy, but chocolate and cheesecake don’t work well together. The flavors bring out the worst in each other.

When I was a kid, my parents would take us to a Basque restaurant. They didn’t offer very many dishes, but I always got the most delicious farm-raised lamb with in-season vegetables. It wasn’t anything special, but the taste was amazing. So much so, that I remember it to this day.

And that’s why I think some dining experiences leave one feeling empty. It’s because they try to do too much, instead of focusing on something simple and special.

As a chef of a popular, fine dining establishment, I have to admit that CF is a guilty pleasure. The food is tasty and usually doesn’t disappoint. The vinaigrettes and sauces may not blow your mind, and I often wonder what third world country they are actually produced and shipped from. But CF delivers a consistent product. I’ve been to CFs in a few states (not often, but it’s an easy go-to restaurant for the family) and the lettuce wraps taste the same everywhere.

I can say from personal experience that producing a consistent product each night for the multitudes (my restaurant does 400 on weeknights, 8-900 on weekends) IS the challenge of my job. Cheesecake must have some corporate kitchen and shipping methods because there is not training on earth that could produce that kind of consistency for those kinds of numbers!

Love your blog, BTW.

By the way – a handy hint to anyone out there interviewing for a restaurant job: If the prospective boss asks you “what’s your favorite restaurant” DO NOT gleefully answer “The Cheesecake Factory!”

Maybe I’m being an ass… but those resumes always go immediately into the “do not hire” pile.

Jacques Pepin

1960s

Due to genius corporate advertising, Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods have become “hip”, and many, such as my sister, will shop there simply because it is what all her friends are doing. In other words, it has become mainstream, with little thought going into why buying organic food is important, other than to get the trendy reusable shopping totes. Many shoppers do not care about what “organic” means, other than it is a buzz word of the moment.

As previous commenter noted, CF has such a large menu, because it is targeting the mainstream population. The corporation cares about little else than the bottom line. And, the sad reality is that the same people who spend their grocery dollars at Whole Foods are spending their dining dollars at CF. Corporate food has created a mirage. People are drawn to it, because they do not know the difference.

I don’t think it’s a matter of being a food snob,Mr. Ruhlman. I think it’s a matter of making educated food choices, and being in touch with where/how our food is produced and the manner in which we consume it. The sadness you describe could be the result of this disconnect.

I strongly suspect that the best diet would be to first travel to Kyoto or Osaka and eat the very best foods lovingly and assiduously prepared, then return home where everything placed before you seems like an affront to your very dignity.

What inspired this idea was reading MFK Fisher’s introduction to Shizuo Tsuji’s “Japanese Cooking, A Simple Art,” which also includes this eloquent quote from New York Magazine’s Alan Rich;

“by the time shoddiness becomes sufficiently visible…its roots have penetrated deeply.”

But the thing I find about chains (and yes, I live in this country and I’m forced to eat at some sometimes as well) is the soul-crushing sameness and schlok. CF is the worst offender among them, but certainly not the only one.

Yes. Lots of people are guilty of it, and it’s not that horrible a failing if you own up to it. Which, by the way, you didn’t.

That’s why you feel sad.

The wait staff took forever, never got the drinks right, then never stopped back to refill them.

The cheesecake was not that great, not enough to put up with the headache.

It’s what people seem to be wanting that bothers me. I run a family bakery, and we work very, very hard to make products that are truly something special. What spooks me lately is that only people over the age of 50 or so seem to really appreciate the stuff. Most people younger than 40 seem to have been fed so much insane crap growing up that their taste buds are pretty much useless (they can detect very salty, very sweet, and not much else).

Our business is embarking on a campaign to educate young people about how to eat well (and cheaply), just to make sure that we can survive past the next two decades. I don’t mind marketing our products, but the fact that we’re having to downright evangelize the concept of eating actual, real food is just disturbing to me.

But if I weren’t a person already interested in food, reading most of the comments from this post wouldn’t make me want to expand my gastronomic horizons, they would just piss me off. The post itself isn’t very snobbish, but it seems like a lot of the comments are. There are obvious important issues associated with what and how we eat, but an education in these issues has to get beyond the us (the educated and healthy) vs. them, locally owned vs. big corporation argument. These kind of arguments only appeal to a certain demographic and are therefore ineffective at reaching the people that we are criticizing.

The problem to me seems to be one of a general disinterest in the process by which things are made. We’ve become a results oriented culture, and apparently have little interest in the means by which the results are obtained. People want a fast meal and don’t appreciate the means by which it’s made. We want a diploma so we can get a good job but don’t want to actually take part in the process of education. It seems to be a part of a larger cultural phenomenon to me.