12 Popular Cheesecake Factory Pasta Dishes, Ranked From Worst To Best

Sitting down to the expansive Cheesecake Factory menu and finding something to order can present quite a case of decision paralysis. The pages are extensive — burgers, small plates, steaks, desserts, and even underrated Cheesecake Factory dishes like Thai lettuce wraps and pineapple upside-down cheesecake.

If it's pasta you're craving, the chain also offers a full menu page of tantalizing options, with dishes ranging from tried-and-true classics to more original takes. These Cheesecake Factory pastas are well known amongst fans — we just had to try them for ourselves, setting out to the nearest location to taste and rank every one of this chain's popular pastas. Taking into account the execution of the sauce, how it works with the noodles, the balance of flavors, and overall taste, these are all 12 of The Cheesecake Factory's popular pasta dishes ranked in order from worst to best.

Spicy chicken chipotle pasta isn't a title you hear often. This is definitely a more original take on a pasta dish that would have Italian nonnas throwing up their hands in frustration — and left me scratching my head in confusion.

On description — penne, honey-glazed chicken, asparagus, peppers, and spicy chipotle Parmesan cream sauce — I was hopeful, largely because I'm a sucker for spicy food. But my expectations were not met as this dish should really be called "sweet chicken chipotle" instead of spicy.

The pieces of chicken on their own were delicious, but mixing them in with pasta, cream sauce, and asparagus just doesn't make sense. The garnish of fried wonton strips, while nice to snack on, is also confusing. The sauce is too sweet, there's almost no chipotle flavor or spice, and the ingredients aren't cohesive. This one was an easy last place. After a few bites, I had no desire to continue eating and couldn't see myself ever ordering the dish again.

Fettuccini Alfredo was invented in Rome in 1908, but in the present-day United States, the dish looks quite different than its origins. The recipe for this incredible sauce is supposed to be just butter, cheese, and pasta water — which is why Martha Stewart doesn't use any cream in her fettuccini Alfredo. But sauces like these can be difficult to make in large batches, and using cream allows chains like The Cheesecake Factory to make larger quantities of a sauce that will hold its creamy consistency without breaking.

The Cheesecake Factory's fettuccini Alfredo is just what you'd expect — long fettuccini noodles drowning in a generous helping of creamy, rich Parmesan sauce. You can order the dish with chicken, shrimp, or plain. In its simplicity, it reads like a dish for the children's menu, something basic to appease a picky child. There aren't strong spices or flavor notes; it is just overwhelmingly creamy.

If you're already a fan of the dish in its Americanized form, then The Cheesecake Factory version pretty much hits the nail on the head in execution. But compared to the rest of the chain's pastas, it falls flat in terms of overall flavor and desirability.

What pasta menu is complete without the classic spaghetti and meatballs, a dish made iconic through TV scenes of slurping a noodle from either side and meeting in the middle for a kiss? The Cheesecake Factory version sticks to the dish's original form with a red sauce, beef and pork meatballs, and the added touch of a fried basil garnish.

I found that this dish, while more composed and flavorful than others ranked below it, was still lacking in the overall taste. The meatballs, while being made with beef and Italian sausage, lacked spice and substance. Texturally, they held together well, but were uninteresting to eat. The tomato sauce is average and lacks the balance of sweetness and acidity that you long for in a good red sauce.

Were I craving this dish, The Cheesecake Factory is not where I would go searching for it. There are simply other pasta dishes on its menu that have more to be excited about.

Pasta noodles are designed to be vessels. Starchy, chewy vessels for sauce, for flavor, and most importantly, for cheese. And if you're going to make a pasta centered around cheese, there may as well be four of them.

The four cheese pasta is by no means bad; it's just difficult to compare to other dishes with more ingredients, spices, and flavors. The sauce, while simple, is brightened with torn pieces of basil. The creamy, cool ricotta on top is delicious when mixed in with the noodles, and the mozzarella melts in with the marinara and gives a nice pull.

This is the perfect pasta for a vegetarian or for a cheese-lover. While I ranked it lower because of the general simplicity, it is still very craveable.

A Cajun jambalaya-style pasta isn't one you see often, but the menu description had my hopes high. The ingredients for jambalaya — shrimp, chorizo, peppers, and chicken — are typically cooked with rice, so using pasta as an alternative starch makes sense. Theoretically, you could get all the flavors, hearty ingredients, and spice of the Louisiana dish in a different form.

I had mixed feelings about The Cheesecake Factory's execution of this pasta. On the one hand, the spices in the sauce were delicious, the fresh linguini was bouncy and flavorful, perfectly absorbing the sauce, and the ingredients were pretty on par with a typical jambalaya (minus the chorizo). On the other hand, the flavor of the chicken and shrimp fell flat, and while the sauce is described on the menu as being very spicy, it is actually quite mild.

I'm ranking it eighth place largely because the flavors weren't on par with what a jambalaya should be, and someone ordering the dish expecting those bold spices and hearty ingredients would find themselves as disappointed as I was. Still, if you don't mind a milder version of the Louisiana classic, there are a few things to love about this dish.

Carbonara is one of those dishes that has built its whole legacy on very simple ingredients that, together, make something very memorable. It's made with spaghetti, pancetta or bacon pieces, and sometimes peas, but the most important aspect is the sauce. Egg yolks are whisked with pasta water and Parmesan cheese to make a rich, hollandaise-reminiscent sauce that clings to the pasta noodles and bursts with flavor.

The Cheesecake Factory version is pretty true to an American carbonara, using peas, bacon, and the classic egg-based sauce. It's good, albeit very bacon-forward. I prefer pancetta (the Italian version of bacon, which is cured rather than smoked) in my carbonara as it has a bit more funk to it and makes the dish more interesting.

This dish was a good middle ground for the pasta menu. It's classic, craveable, and well-prepared, although it's not exceptional when compared to other carbonaras. It's a good order if you're browsing The Cheesecake Factory's pastas and want something familiar, although they have some original dishes that stand out more.

Evelyn's Favorite pasta features penne noodles and an abundance of vegetables tossed in a cheesy Parmesan sauce. It's a play on a pasta primavera, one of those dishes that defined the '70s, but this one's named after Evelyn Overton, the mother of The Cheesecake Factory's founder and the woman whose cheesecake recipe started the chain. 

Broccoli, zucchini, asparagus, peppers, tomato, onion, garlic, and fresh herbs make this dish bright and abundant. There's enough cheese coating the noodles and vegetables that eating it feels somewhat like dipping greens in fondue — you can't even taste the broccoli. What I especially love about it is the generous sprinkling of lemon zest, an ingredient that makes the overall flavor feel fresh and light despite the cheese.

I didn't rank this plate very high, mainly because it's not an original recipe, and because it lacked some of the bold flavors of The Cheesecake Factory's other pastas. But if you're looking to increase your veggie intake without compromising on flavor, this is a great dish.

Tomato basil is a great combination for pasta, creating a flavor profile that's hard to say no to. The tomato basil pasta at The Cheesecake Factory is complemented by grilled chicken, mozzarella, and penne noodles. Perfectly cooked cherry tomatoes pop their soft skins when you bite into them, and the chicken is juicy and sliced thin so it absorbs the flavor of the sauce as you eat it.

My one complaint with this dish was that the basil wasn't super noticeable. There's a drizzle of pesto to garnish the chicken, but I'm missing the freshly torn leaves that appear in the sauce of the four cheese pasta and add so much freshness. Still, the chewy mozzarella chunks, flavorful chicken, and bright tomato flavors make this a craveable pasta dish. If it had more basil, I may have ranked it higher, but there were other dishes that had more punch to their flavor.

When someone says they're craving pasta, it can mean a lot of different things. White sauce, red sauce, butter sauce, veggies, meat, or just plain cheese — the options are quite endless. But this farfalle pasta with chicken and roasted garlic strikes me as being the pasta for anyone, the pasta I will think of when it's late at night and I want something creamy and comforting. It's got a little bit of everything — chicken, mushrooms, tomatoes, pancetta, peas, caramelized onions. The sauce is generously portioned and rich with roasted garlic and nutty Parmesan. The roasted garlic is truly the star, filling every bite with bursts of mouth-watering flavor.

I really don't have anything negative to say about this one — I'd absolutely order it again. As we climb higher in this list, there were just a few pastas I was more drawn to and would order more often.

Sometimes it only takes one ingredient to really make a dish shine, and for The Cheesecake Factory's pasta da Vinci, it's Madeira wine. Somewhat similar to a sherry, Madeira is a fortified wine with a bold flavor. You can smell it in the sauce of this pasta, an aroma of cooked cherries that blends seamlessly with the chicken, the mushrooms, the onions. It appears to be a butter rather than a cream sauce, one made by reducing the wine almost to a syrup before expertly mounting in cold cubes over low heat to create a creamy emulsification.

If I'm nitpicking, I do wish this dish were served with angel hair or linguine, something that allows for a higher sauce-to-pasta ratio. The penne is thick enough to distract from that glorious sauce, which I find myself reaching for with a spoon. But the overall flavor made it an easy top three, and a dish I would certainly order again.

There are a few rules of thumb to know when eating at The Cheesecake Factory, and its massive portion sizes are one of them. Just the presentation of this pasta is impressive. A large oval plate of sauce-soaked farfalle bow ties adorned with a tower of perfectly fried, gloriously crunchy chicken cutlets. It's a dish that would definitely be plenty for two people with the amount of chicken on top, but one you might hoard to yourself once you taste it.

The pasta is described as having mushrooms, peppers, and onions in a spicy New Orleans sauce. It's heavy on the garlic in the best way, and has a lingering heat that you won't notice at first, but that does sneak its way in. It's the perfect combination of sauce and noodle, as the creases of those bow ties allow plenty of real estate for sauce to cling to. I can't say enough good things about the chicken, which is perfectly seasoned and breaded.

My only reason for ranking this one second as opposed to first was the spice level — it wasn't hot enough. For the spice lover, if something is advertised as such, then there's a certain expectation (especially with something like Louisiana chicken) that the flavor will be there, and this one fell a bit short. It is still a great second place, though, and one you can't go wrong with.

Here is a dish with spicy in the name that lives up to its title. A dish that just checked every box in terms of flavor, noodle choice, cohesiveness, and craveability. The spicy rigatoni vodka pasta from The Cheesecake Factory was my favorite of all the pastas, and one I would order again and again.

Rigatoni and vodka sauce are a classic noodle-and-sauce duo, but the addition of Calabrian chili (per the chef), cherry tomatoes, torn leaves of fresh basil, and pieces of crispy pancetta were all the ingredients that took this dish from basic to memorable.

The pancetta and Parmesan make it rich and hearty, the tomatoes and basil add pops of freshness, but what really made me smile was the spice level. It warms the mouth and makes your tongue tingle without ever going too far, making the dish exciting and flavorful. There are many great pastas on The Cheesecake Factory's menu, but this was my absolute favorite.

This ranking includes every pasta dish from the menu at The Cheesecake Factory. To decide the order, I took into account the preparation of the ingredients, presentation, originality, and overall flavor. The Cheesecake Factory doesn't make its pasta noodles in-house, but it does make the sauces from scratch. Thus, the sauce and how it worked with the noodles was really the most important factor.

Some of the dishes on the pasta menu are more original, while others are classic pasta plates you can find on many menus. I gave extra points to the more original dishes, as most people already know whether they like a carbonara or fettuccini Alfredo.