The Cheesecake Factory, Rockville, Md.

Well, so much for today being a fast day and my idea that I might give up meat for Lent. My friend Ian is such a bad influence! This evening, he decided that we had to go shopping in Maryland. Once we got there, he announced that he was ravenously hungry, so after inspecting all the restaurants and food court spots in the mall, he decided that we had to go to The Cheesecake Factory.

It was, as usual, crowded, and we had about a twenty minute wait for a table. The Rockville store is much like all the others in terms of decor, though this one seeemed to be rather longer and narrower than many.

The worst thing about this Cheesecake Factory—and this is common to all of them—is that they don't have any proper iced tea. All they offer is this nasty, disgusting "tropical iced tea," with a cloying mango-passionfruit taste. I really wish their corporate office would offer a normal, regular iced tea as an alternative.

We started by splitting a fried macaroni and cheese appetizer. They make balls of macaroni and cheese, bread them, and then deep fry them, and they are quite delicious! Four large balls make up the dish, and I daresay that a whole order of them plus a little green salad would make a tasty, filling, full dinner for someone. They were served on a pool of a rather medicinal-tasting marinara sauce that next time I will remember to have the kitchen hold. I didn't think the marinara added much to the mac and cheese balls, anyway.



For his main course, Ian ordered the Factory burrito grande, a long, oval plate-sized chicken, cheese, and rice burrito. He always orders his burritos bare, so he had them serve the guacamole, tomatoes, sour cream, and cilantro toppings on the side, which meant that I got a nice little "guacamole salad" to enjoy with my meal. The burrito came with Spanish rice and black beans.



I had the Hungarian goulash with buttered noodles. It was surprisingly good. The goulash consisted of a lot of chunks of tender, flavorful beef stewed with caramelized onions in a brown sauce spiced with Hungarian paprika. The whole plate was sprinkled with snipped parsley.



Even though I really wanted some chocolate cake or some carrot cake, I knew I couldn't eat a whole piece after all the food we'd already had, so I acquiesced to eating cheesecake, since Ian had never eaten at this chain before and hadn't ever had their cheesecake. We split a piece of their "original" cheesecake topped with glazed, fresh strawberries and garnished with two big dollops of whipped cream.