Cheesecake Factory

I took my six year old to dinner for Valentines. The Cheesecake Factory is nice for a mall restaurant: sufficiently dark, a bit sparkly, cozy, and with enough complicated items on the menu and television sets visible from the bar. Sure, it's schizophrenic, but let's remember the venue. It's in a mall. So the mix of chandelier and ESPN, hey, welcome to the Midwest. We had a round booth facing the bar and felt like offspring of Bobby Knight.

We shared a shake, however, and something in it wasn't right. So despite the great service, view of the basketball game, and mini-burger and thai entrees, we boxed most of our food and left a little earlier than planned.

The wait-system is a horror show, so cattle-callish, what with the buzzers and mutliple on-holds. I'm not sure how else to accommodate the kind of foot traffic they get, though. Avoid the booths along the perimeter - totally cold atmosphere.