Hartford
Say Jambalaya Cheese(cake)!
by | Jan 24, 2024 11:17 am
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Posted to: Food
Cajun jambalaya pasta.
The Cheesecake Factory
West Hartford
Jan. 22, 2024
I recently came across a TikTok video that went viral late last year. In it, a woman refused to leave the car when her date took her to The Cheesecake Factory. I’m always a little skeptical of these kinds of videos (or do people really record every moment of their lives?), but I decided to believe it was true and see for myself. Is The Cheesecake Factory really too plebeian for a date?
To answer that question, I invited a female friend to join me at the restaurant’s location in West Hartford. I wanted her opinion of what the factory of cheesecake offers.
The first thing it offers is a massive menu. People often joke about the size of The Cheesecake Factory’s menu. Their menu is the length of a short story.
We started with drinks. I wasn’t sure what to get, so my friend suggested that I go with a “grown-man drink” and get a strawberry negroni. It consisted of Aperol, Carpano Antica vermouth and Strawberry Botanist. I was expecting something strong and grown man-tasting, but the negroni was fruity without being saccharine. I could barely taste the alcohol.
Strawberry Negroni.
She chose to get an espresso martini. It’s exactly what it sounds like: cold espresso with coffee liqueur and vodka. Even though I’m not a coffee drinker, I enjoyed my taste of the martini. The alcohol balanced the bitterness of the coffee nicely, and the drink had a smooth, full taste.
Espresso Martini.
For food, I decided to go with a dish I’d never tried anywhere before, the Cajun jambalaya pasta. It starts with a bed of linguini, topped with chicken and shrimp sautéed with tomatoes, onions and peppers in a “very spicy” Cajun sauce. The plate was piled high with tender chunks of chicken and well-cooked shrimp, but there wasn’t quite enough Cajun sauce to cover all of it. While the sauce was peppery, I didn’t get much spice from it. It provided a good overall flavor, but most of the dish’s taste came from the peppers and stewed tomatoes it was sautéed with.
On the other hand, my friend chose the shrimp and chicken gumbo. It also had shrimp, chicken, tomatoes, peppers and onions, but it included andouille sausage and garlic simmered in a spicy Cajun style broth with cream and steamed white rice. I tasted her meal and found out where the spiciness I’d been promised had gone. The garlic enhanced the spice, giving it the kick that was missing from my jambalaya. My friend said she didn’t expect for her gumbo to be quite so soupy, but it was good nonetheless.
Shrimp and chicken gumbo.
Finally, one can’t visit The Cheesecake Factory without trying The Cheesecake. We settled on the tiramisu cheesecake, which was literally tiramisu and cheesecake combined. It had a stronger coffee flavor to me than the espresso martini did, down to the bitter aftertaste that lingered on the back of my tongue. The whipped cream was light and fluffy, and I ate that while she ate the cheesecake. In her words, it was “perfect.”
Tiramisu cheesecake.
“So,” I asked at the end of the evening when we were leaving the restaurant, “if this had been a date, what would you have rated it?”
She thought for a moment. “I’d give it an 8 out of 10. The food was good and the drinks were good. I don’t know what that lady on the TikTok was so upset about.”
There you have it: The Cheesecake Factory is a perfectly fine place for a date. And if your date is upset with you, just show them this article!
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The Cheesecake Factory is open 11:30 a.m.-10 p.m. every day of the week.
Jamil is headed to the movies!
