The World's Largest Cheesecake Factory Sits At The Bottom Of An Indoor Ski Slope
The Cheesecake Factory has many notably distinct qualities — its ballistically multidirectional, truly unique decor, the fact that it's a family business that was named after an actual factory that made cheesecakes, and of course, the ridiculously long menu (which servers have to memorize) — but one of the ones that don't get talked about nearly often enough is just how massive the interiors of the brand's restaurants truly are.
There don't appear to be any studies involving the average number of seats at The Cheesecake Factory locations, but some, at least, have seating capacity numbering in the hundreds. It's a big restaurant. And the biggest Cheesecake Factory location, it turns out, can't be found anywhere in America. To find the grandest factory of them all, you have to go to the Mall of the Emirates in Dubai.
And boy, is it a trip. For starters, you can find it near the base of a manufactured ski slope that attracts thousands of visitors and even has the approval of Olympic snowboarder Shaun White.
The restaurant is shockingly massive
It can't be overstated how big this particular location is. It occupies over 22,800 square feet and seats 526 people. If there's another chain restaurant location that can literally seat half a thousand human beings at one time — at any chain, not just The Cheesecake Factory — it's not clear where it might be. There's an IKEA in Hyderabad with seating for 1,000, but can we really count IKEA as a restaurant brand? Nah.
As far as that ski slope, well ... Dubai as a city has a habit of spitting in the eye of reason when it comes to what can be constructed in the middle of a desert, and Ski Dubai might be the best example: It's a 22,500 square meter indoor ski area that maintains sub-freezing temperatures year-round in abject defiance of the petty laws of how climate is supposed to work. It features five ski slopes, and The Cheesecake Factory sits at the bottom of one of them. It's unclear whether one could ski directly down the slope and through the front door without stopping, but imagining you can is fun. However, it's possible to watch people skiing down the slope from the restaurant.
There are other large Cheesecake Factory locations in the Middle East, too
The location at the Mall of the Emirates isn't even the only large Cheesecake Factory location in the Middle East. There's another spot at the Mall of the Avenues in Kuwait City, Kuwait, and another in Dubai itself in the Dubai Mall. Both were opened in late 2012, so the Ski Dubai location seems to have been an attempt to top them. Middle Easterners really dig on The Cheesecake Factory, apparently — and who can blame them?
With everything about it being so off the wall, including its massive size, The Cheesecake Factory has a strong (if not unimpeachable) case as America's most unique chain restaurant. Whereas other large chains like Olive Garden, Chili's, or Applebee's appear to have had their rough edges sanded down into the most innocuous, corporate-friendly environment possible, The Cheesecake Factory continually pushes the frontiers of restaurant weirdness. It's hard not to respect the company for living its culinary truth.