Grand Illusion

At first glance, you would say that the Overland Park Cheesecake Factory — like its sister restaurant on the Country Club Plaza — is no more a factory than the General Motors Fairfax plant is a sushi bar. For one thing, no cheesecakes are actually baked in either restaurant; the 33 cheesecakes listed on the menu are baked and frozen at the corporation’s facility in Calabasas Hills, California.

But these restaurants operate as smoothly and efficiently as any high-tech manufacturing plant, which explains why the chain is one of the most successful sit-down operations in the nation. “A typical Cheesecake Factory,” reports Restaurant Business, “generates upwards of $11 million annually.” That’s a hell of a lot of customers, if you figure that the check average for each patron hovers at about $15.

But food isn’t the only product the Cheesecake Factory peddles. Illusion is a big part of the experience here, which is why it’s easier to compare the restaurants to the movie studios of the 1930s and ’40s — the legendary “dream factories” — than to a modern assembly line. The exterior of the Overland Park location, in fact, looks more like a Moorish palace from the Universal backlot than a casual suburban dining venue.

The cavernous interior is pure Disneyland, throwing together architectural and decorative elements from so many different eras (ancient Egyptian, Moroccan, 15th-century Venice and a splash of country French) that I couldn’t decide if I really was in Overland Park or had stumbled into a time warp and landed in one of the kitschy “palace” sets of Cecil B. DeMille’s Samson and Delilah. Of course, Mr. DeMille liked the casts of his movies to be attractive, which is why I knew I was still in Kansas, Dorothy. There were so many obese (and I don’t mean merely chubby or pleasantly plump) customers squeezed into booths in the main dining room on one Saturday afternoon that I looked like a will-o’-the wisp by comparison.

But if I were pushing 350 pounds (and God knows, I’m on my merry way) and had a ravenous appetite, the Cheesecake Factory would be on my Top Ten list; the portions are gargantuan, and the servers — a few are pretty hefty themselves — encourage diners to eat, eat, eat! And perhaps because the servers’ uniforms (white pants, white shirts, white shoes) are vaguely similar to what nurses used to wear, you can’t help but assume that they’re giving healthy advice when suggesting a hefty ol’ slab of chocolate-peanut-butter-cookie-dough cheesecake.

On the afternoon I was surrounded by the cellulite set, I was dining with my friend Bob, the slender Marilyn and Marilyn’s 12-year-old granddaughter, Summer. The precocious Summer loved the idea that she was eating in a factory, and no amount of explaining otherwise would dissuade her.

“But it doesn’t look like a factory,” she said, looking up toward the artfully painted ceiling. No, I told her, the place actually looks like a temple, a shrine devoted to Adephagia, the Greek goddess of gluttony. At that very moment, as if on cue, the waitress arrived, laden with platters of appetizers: fried macaroni-and-cheese balls, slices of chicken quesadilla that were thicker than a Vanity Fair magazine, and a pile of the restaurant’s own version of White Castle burgers, called Roadside Sliders.

The little burgers are the same size as White Castle cheeseburgers but less greasy or mushy. They tasted better, too — but then again, I was cold sober. I was intrigued by the idea of fried macaroni-and-cheese balls, which sounded so artery-clogging good that I couldn’t resist ordering them. They certainly didn’t disappoint us; each meatball-sized ball had been rolled in bread crumbs and plunged into a fryer until its surface was crispy and its interior molten and cheesy.

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The macaroni balls and burgers were hits, but we agreed that the chicken pot stickers were boring and the mini crab cakes, though visually stunning, were less about crabmeat and more about chopped peppers, breading and who knows what.

But thanks to the fabled generous portions at the Cheesecake Factory, our little group was so stuffed from eating appetizers, we couldn’t think of actually ordering lunch … or dessert. And we still took food home! “That’s why people love this place so much,” announced Bob as we walked through the crowded foyer of the restaurant. “You don’t get one meal here — you get three.”

Well, that’s the illusion anyway. Another magic trick expertly performed by the Cheesecake Factory is leaving diners with the impression that there are hundreds and hundreds of culinary choices on the 20-page, spiral-bound, laminated menu. Oh, there are about 200 dining options, but most of them are variations on similar combinations of ingredients. As Restaurant Business puts it, “By listing extensive permutations of a reasonable number of ingredients, the menu gives the illusion of endless choice.”

A week or so later, I returned on a weekday evening with Daphne and Ann Marie, who had once owned her own small restaurant and admired the Cheesecake Factory’s gimmick. “The presentations are so impressively huge,” she said, “you think the food is better than it is.”

It’s a dynamite sales tool. After a short wait at the bar, we were seated in the dimly lighted back dining room at 7:45 p.m. and were immediately informed by the waitress that the Hungarian beef goulash was all sold out. Goulash? Gone? I didn’t even want it, and I already felt cheated. “We sell out of food a lot,” the server whispered. “Especially the fresh fish. It goes fast.”

The joint wasn’t busy, but something was off that night, starting with the disappearing goulash. The sassy server didn’t bring bread with the salads, and for the first hour someone kept progressively dimming the lights until it was so dark in there, I wanted to ask for a Braille menu.

Daphne ordered one of the newer dishes, crispy chicken costoletto, a kind of ersatz chicken piccata made with a breaded and sautéed breast splashed with a tart lemon sauce. Ann Marie was slightly suspicious of the inexpensive steak Diane, a dish rarely found on local menus. She was pleasantly surprised when the dish arrived: small but tender beef medallions dusted with crushed peppercorns and blanketed with a silky mushroom and wine sauce.

I don’t know what possessed me to desire pecan-crusted catfish. (I liked the sound of the accompanying creamy “pickapeppa” sauce.) It was a nice, flaky, boneless fillet, but the crust wasn’t very crunchy, and the pickapeppa pooped out.

Ah, but we were all saving our enthusiasm for the big finale, three towering wedges of cheesecake carefully chosen from the lengthy list at the back of the menu. When it comes to this restaurant’s signature offering, there are no illusions. This really is the most exquisite cheesecake in town. The three of us opted for the most decadent-sounding choices: Adam’s Peanut Butter Fudge Ripple for Daphne (who swooned), Fresh Banana Cream Cheesecake — covered with sliced bananas — for Ann Marie, and for little weight-watching me, the insanely indulgent Chocolate Mousse Cheesecake.

They were all sumptuously (and deceptively) light, with the banana-cream piece the fluffiest and the chocolate mousse the richest. “Usually we don’t even taste them here,” Daphne said. “We order them to go.” After a few bites, she requested a Styrofoam box to pack up her dessert.

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As we walked out, I noticed that customers seemed almost mesmerized by their meals, as if they couldn’t believe their good fortune. At this temple of gluttony, every meal is a religious experience.