Editor’s note: The following article is an op-ed, and the views expressed are the author’s own. Read more opinions on theGrio.
There’s been a lot of anti-Cheesecake Factory slander floating around recently, and I’m not having it. My mother has forced me to go to Cheesecake Factory several times, and as a restaurant, it’s fine. It’s in the category of “I would never suggest going there, but if mom wants to go there, I’m OK with it.” But the anti-Cheesecake Factory sentiment is raging throughout Beyoncé’s internet right now. There’s a viral list where women named restaurants and places they refused to go on first dates and Cheesecake Factory was No. 1. What??? There’s also the viral story of a woman who politely but firmly refused to go to Cheesecake Factory on a date. Even my man Marc Lamont Hill has mocked Cheesecake Factory on CNN. I don’t get all of the hate.
I’m someone who hates lots of things, but I don’t see y’all’s point this time. I’ve had several vaguely pleasurable experiences at Cheesecake Factory. Also, every year the restaurant industry polls over 4,000 diners, and in 2020 the voters said it was the best casual dining place in America. It was also No. 1 in 2019. It was also No. 1 in 2016. As far as medium-nice chain restaurants, this is the cream of the crop. A Food Network star chef once told Vox, “The Cheesecake Factory is the Michelin three stars of chain restaurants.” I don’t know why y’all are mad.
The Cheesecake Factory pulls in nearly $3 billion a year so they must be doing something right. It’s in a lane the restaurant industry calls “upscale casual dining.” Cheesecake actually claims to have invented upscale casual dining. (This sector includes Applebee’s, Olive Garden, Hard…
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