We Tasted 12 Popular Cheesecake Factory Pastas — Here's The Dish We'd Never Order Again
The menu at The Cheesecake Factory can be understandably overwhelming. The tome handed to you by your server is full of pages and pages of pastas, salads, seafood, steaks, flatbread pizzas, bowls, "glamburgers," and then SkinnyLicious versions of it all. If you ever wanted katsu, but your friend had a hankering for jambalaya fried into arancini-style balls, then The Cheesecake Factory is the right place to go. With all these options, you want to make sure you don't order a dud. That's why our reviewer tried 12 of the 14 pasta options and ranked them. Thankfully, you can narrow down your options by one if you avoid our last-place pasta, the Spicy Chipotle Chicken.
Our reviewer judged on originality, presentation, ingredients, flavor, and how the noodles and sauces worked together. While chipotle in Italian food is certainly original, the dish ended up being a confusing mess. Instead of spicy, it was sweet. The chicken, asparagus, sauce, and noodles all pulled in different directions rather than forming a cohesive dish. The fried wonton topping feels like a misguided attempt at playful fusion cuisine that falls short.
Here's what other people are saying about The Cheesecake Factory's spicy chipotle chicken
Our reviewer certainly didn't like the Spicy Chipotle Chicken pasta — they couldn't even finish the dish — but do other people agree? It turns out that the pasta is a popular dish. The internet is full of requests for copycat recipes and attempts at such. In a Reddit post about favorite pasta dishes at The Cheesecake Factory, the pasta was high up. One poster called it "perfection," and another proclaimed, "There are so many things on the menu that I want to try, but I can't bring myself to NOT order this!" On another Reddit thread from fans of the podcast Doughboys (one of the best food podcasts) discussing best dishes at the chain, the Spicy Chipotle Chicken pasta got the top spot.
Some people agree with our reviewer that it is a sweet and confusing mess. On Instagram, a poster said they didn't understand the dish. They wrote that the experience of the pasta's sauce "was more like I was eating chili with pasta." In the end, if this pasta sounds like something you would like, then give it a try!