The Cheesecake Factory is a punchline. But it's also the California dream
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Set us as preferred On the night Erik and Lyle Menendez killed their parents, they offered an elaborate, twisted and ultimately unbelievable explanation of those crucial hours in 1989.They said they screened Tim Burton’s “Batman” at a movie theater in Century City, cruised over to Santa Monica for a food festival, then stopped by the house for a second before planning to meet friends for dinner at an uber-trendy Beverly Hills eatery.But when they got home, they claimed to find their parents shot multiple times.The destination for that aborted dinner? The Cheesecake Factory.The eatery, famous for its gaudy interiors, huge portions and even huger calorie counts, has been thrust into the 2026 midterm elections.
It started when Barack Obama joked that President Trump renovated the White House to look like “Saddam Hussein opened a Cheesecake Factory.”Trump and his allies fired back, both accusing Obama of elitism and taking great offense at the comparison.“For you to say it’s a Cheesecake Factory, that just shows why you were a lousy president,” Trump said.The Cheesecake Factory is many things.
But above all else it’s a very California invention.The eatery opened inauspiciously in 1978, a modest, shockingly restrained space in Beverly Hills’ elite golden triangle.It was known for a lot of food (and many cheesecake varieties) at reasonable prices in a Rodeo Drive setting — affordable opulence.
The operators gained inspiration from the fancy places around them, including Wolfgang Puck’s Spago.But the mission was to offer the average Joe a luxury experience.By the time the Menendez brothers used it as part of their alibi, the restaurant was hot.The Cheesecake Factory we know today came with a major expansion in the 1990s.
This is when we got the eclectic interiors of marble, polished wood, Roman columns morp...