RESTO RANT: Cheese Cake Factory

Hubby and I recently purchased the Gourmet Jakarta magazine. We tab the restos we’ve eaten in and the ones we want to try. One of those was the Cheese Cake factory in Jalan Tomang Raya. Unfortunately because we are not familiar with Jakarta, we ended up in the wrong one last Saturday  – the Barito branch.

You see different branches have different concept and the one we wanted was the one with the wine bar. But we were so hungry we settled for this one. And decided we could move for drinks in another place.

The ambiance was nothing spectacular, though furnished in warm tones, I found the lighting to be too bright. They mixed yellow light with bright white light.

Did the food redeem the lack of ambiance? 

Service was awful, it took us a long time to order, because every time we had a question about a dish, the server would say she didn’t know, and would approach another waitress. Then that waitress would listen to our question, and then not know the answer again and make us wait again. It wasn’t because they couldn’t understand English because our friend K was talking to them in Bahasa. They perfectly understood the question, but just didn’t have any product knowledge whatsoever.

One waitress named Eros R. was particularly frustrating. After all our questions were address, we finally gave her our orders, but every time she would repeat it to us, it would be missing one order. WOW. Talk about goldfish memory! This girl is exponentially worse than me. The funny thing was she was writing stuff down while we said our order. So what the was she writing? We had to repeat our order 3 or 4 times, until she finally got it right. While this was happening, my husband could see the other waiters/waitresses were laughing at the waitress attending to us. (Does that mean, it’s a usual occurrence with this waitress?)

 

 

 

 

 

 

According to our friend the cheese steak sandwich had too much onions, and did not taste like the usual Philly cheesesteak sandwich. The slices of steak was also tiny, so don’t let the size of the bun fool you. The fries portion was less than generous.

 

 

I ordered this because the Gourmet Jakarta magazine recommended it as one of the bestsellers. This has to be the worst grilled chicken breast I’ve every had in my whole life. When they served it, it looked and smelled undercooked so I sent it back to the kitchen so they could cook it some more. When they served it again, they said they pan fried it, but to be honest, I think they just microwaved it. It still smelled awful but was just slightly tougher. I just couldn’t eat the chicken. How can anyone get grilled chicken wrong? They probably didn’t marinade it at all, that’s why it was flavorless. And I don’t understand why it had that raw meat smell! It was just to bad because everything about the dish was great (creamy mashed potatoes, veggies and the sauce) EXCEPT for the chicken!

 

 

Their lasagna at least was good. My husband loved it and said he would order it again. At least someone was happy with his dinner.

 

 

The ice cream is watery and not creamy. The only thing that tasted good about it was the chocolate shavings. Too bad, because the ice cream display was so attractive and delicious looking.

 

 

The cheesecake at least was great. We would definitely come back just to have cheesecake. So disappointing though because based on what the magazine said we were expecting something at least above average for dinner. We will have to check out the Tomang Raya branch, because sometimes it’s really just that the staff in this particular branch are not good.

The only saving grace of this branch is the Manager, Richard, who was very nice, spoke good english and answered all our questions completely and with confidence.

Before I left, I filled up a feedback form. I hope that management improves the standard of service and ensures that their staff have adequate product information and training before letting them handle customers.

Next time it’s strictly for cheesecakes (and maybe lasagna)!

All prices above are exclusive of 5% Service Charge and 10% Government Tax.

Cheese Cake Factory

• Jl. Barito II No. 19A, Jakarta Selatan
• Phone: +62 21 739 2102
• Fax: +62 21 727 95856