Westchester Breakfast Club

Cheesecake Factory
1 Maple Avenue
White Plains, NY 10605(Map it!)

Attendees: Shelley, Jeffrey, Sylvia

Shelley

It’s been awhile since I’ve been to the Cheesecake Factory. So long that I’d forgotten about their monstrously huge portions (more on that later). But the WBC has been bouncing around the idea of trying their Sunday brunch for quite awhile, and knowing that it’s now the season for pumpkin cheesecake sealed the deal.

There were just three of us this morning, but we still were able to get a roomy booth next to the window and not one of the small interior tables with the hard wicker chairs.

Having been sorely disappointed by my breakfast “quesadilla” last week, I decided I would give Mexican breakfast another whirl and chose the Sunrise Fiesta Burrito. It’s a fiesta. But several hours after sunrise. I asked for this without beans and without the avocado cream sauce on top. I’m sure my fellow diners will comment on the calorie counts listed on the menu at the Cheesecake. I was a bit horrified when I saw the calorie count on the burrito, and began to wonder whether I consume that many calories at all of our WBC outings.

Once I saw my burrito, I felt confident that no other breakfast would come near to the calories in this thing.

The burrito arrived and it was unnaturally large. You’ll clearly see that it dwarfed an average dinner knife. Yes, I know the Cheesecake has large portions, but this was just ridiculous. It should have said on the menu that the burrito was suitable for sharing. Or to be used as wartime rations. In any case, I noticed that the burrito was indeed covered with avocado cream sauce, which I did my best to scrape off. The burrito was flavorful, filled with scrambled eggs, assorted peppers, onions, potatoes, cheese, and chicken chorizo sausage. A problem, though, was that the ingredients were not evenly distributed throughout the burrito. It was like uncovering geologic layers: first I hit an egg section, after that was a section of sausage, then a pepper-filled section, then, in the middle, were where the potatoes had been placed. I would have much preferred an evenly blended filling, and I wouldn’t have had to go hunting for the eggs. That was another problem: there weren’t enough eggs and what eggs there were were completely overwhelmed by the other fillings that had I not actually seen with my own eyes pieces that resembled scrambled egg, I wouldn’t have known they were there at all.

I finally had to stop my search for eggs in the burrito, because I had to be sure to leave room for dessert. That’s right, dessert. After breakfast. I mean, we were at the Cheesecake Factory, you’d expect us to leave without having any cheesecake?

We decided to share two slices of cheesecake between the three of us: pumpkin cheesecake and red velvet cheesecake. The pumpkin cheesecake was better than the red velvet. The red velvet was just too much. There was too much going on between the red velvet cake, the cheesecake, the frosting, and the white chocolate curls on the side. Too much I say, too much. The pumpkin cheesecake was simpler and much better. It was creamy with a nice spiced pumpkin flavor. I’ll definitely have to sneak back for another slice before the holiday season is through.

By the way, I took my remaining burrito half home with me. Be warned: it’s perhaps not a good idea to have the leftovers later the same day. An all Cheesecake Factory meal day is maybe not the best of days. Would I go back to Cheesecake Factory for Sunday brunch? Maybe, especially if, like the group of well-dressed teenage girls we saw, I needed a solid meal to get me ready for a day at the mall. But I’d probably try something other than the burrito, unless I had a friend, or two, or three, to share it with.

Side note: Sitting at a table near us we spotted a slender-looking woman who polished off three different breakfast entrees, all by herself. We overheard her mention something to her waiter about how she realized it looked disgusting and about being on a new diet. Um…really?

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Sylvia

There were two reasons why we broke our unofficial “no chains” rule and visited the Cheesecake Factory: Red Velvet Cheesecake and Pumpkin Cheesecake. Good enough reasons, no?

The Cheesecake Factory has a breakfast selection available all day 7 days a week. On Sundays the restaurant opens an hour early and offers an additional Sunday Brunch selection, which is an expanded breakfast menu, but a little more than just eggs.

We took advantage of the free street parking in White Plains and took a brisk walk down to the Cheesecake Factory. We arrived promptly at 10AM to find that they haven’t opened yet, and a small crowd had formed outside. Finally, after a few minutes, the doors were opened to the heated insides.

I ordered the Lemon Ricotta pancakes and a cup of coffee. As we waited for our orders, we munched on the usual bread basket. I don’t know why they include the plain baguette with the much more delicious darker wheat bread.

The coffee was lackluster, and got cold quickly given that it was served in a glass mug, and not very hot to begin with.

The lemon ricotta pancakes were huge. They were also much much better than the ones I had at the Brickyard Bistro . The lemon zest was much more subtle, and the pancakes themselves were much more edible. I wish I had ordered them with no powdered sugar, because there was just a lot of it. The strawberries on top were not freshly sliced strawberries, but they were good, and complemented the pancakes well. The calorie count is listed on the menu, which is a practice I completely disagree with. When I go out to eat, I know full well what I am getting myself into, I do not need to be reminded of how many calories I am consuming. It just makes me feel so guilty about the whole thing. Anyway, the calorie count for the pancakes was off-putting, but it didn’t stop me from finishing them all off. I was hungry, and besides, I skipped the syrup (the powdered sugar did the trick), and I had gone for a run that morning.

Using that same chain of reasoning, we had to get some cheesecake to finish off the meal right. The pumpkin cheesecake was great. The pumpkin spices were excellent, and the cheesecake itself wasn’t so creamy and dense. It felt more like pumpkin pie filling. I enjoyed it very much.

Now, I love red velvet cake with a cream cheese frosting (buttercream is too sweet for me). So, when Shelley pointed out to me, months ago, that the Cheesecake Factory was now serving a red velvet cheesecake, I was intrigued. Especially since cheesecake is made with cream cheese, would it work as a cheesecake? No, or at least, not the way the Cheesecake Factory made it. It just didn’t work. To give you a better picture, think, of a cake with a layer of cheesecake and a layer of red velvet cake in a cream cheese frosting. Now take two of those cakes and put them on top of one another, and then cover the entire thing with a thick layer of cream cheese frosting and cover the sides in white chocolate shavings. That is what their Ultimate Red Velvet Cheesecake was. Too much of a lot of mediocre things put together with hopes of something spectacular. It was just too much, and the cake was dry.

The Czar says: I’d go back for breakfast because the offerings are more distinct than your usual diner offerings. But beware, the portions are huge. While your’re there, share a piece of cheesecake, just not the red velvet one. Then burn it all off with a power walk either back to the car, or through the Westchester across the street.

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