{"id":514282,"date":"2026-10-31T17:34:10","date_gmt":"2026-10-31T17:34:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/514282\/"},"modified":"2026-10-31T17:34:10","modified_gmt":"2026-10-31T17:34:10","slug":"the-cheesecake-factory-is-a-punchline-but-its-also-the-california-dream","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/514282\/","title":{"rendered":"The Cheesecake Factory is a punchline. But it’s also the California dream"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

On the night Erik and Lyle Menendez killed their parents, they offered an elaborate, twisted and ultimately unbelievable explanation <\/a>of those crucial hours in 1989.<\/p>\n

They said they screened Tim Burton\u2019s \u201cBatman\u201d 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.<\/p>\n

The destination for that aborted dinner? The Cheesecake Factory.<\/p>\n

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 \u201cSaddam Hussein opened a Cheesecake Factory.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump and his allies fired back, both accusing Obama of elitism and taking great offense at the comparison. \u201cFor you to say it\u2019s a Cheesecake Factory, that just shows why you were a lousy president,\u201d Trump said.<\/a><\/p>\n

The Cheesecake Factory is many things. But above all else it\u2019s a very California invention.<\/p>\n

The eatery opened inauspiciously in 1978, a modest, shockingly restrained space in Beverly Hills\u2019 elite golden triangle. <\/p>\n

It was known for a lot of food (and many cheesecake varieties) at reasonable prices in a Rodeo Drive setting \u2014 affordable opulence. The operators gained inspiration from the fancy places around them, including Wolfgang Puck\u2019s Spago. But the mission was to offer the average Joe a luxury experience.<\/p>\n

By the time the Menendez brothers used it as part of their alibi, the restaurant was hot.<\/p>\n

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 morphing into palm trees in a look that blended architectural styles from Egypt, England, Italy, France and any number of other places. Sure, you were now eating at a shopping mall and not in the booth next to Sylvester Stallone, but the experience needed to still feel glitzy.<\/p>\n

Rick McCormack, the architect behind the look, credited founder David Overton with the inspiration, saying he wanted to evoke funky 1970s San Francisco restaurants located in grand Victorian houses.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have these French limestone floors, then we throw in some Egyptian columns, Victorian beadboard wood paneling \u2014 a really eclectic mix \u2014 which most people wouldn\u2019t be brave enough to try,\u201d McCorma<\/a>ck told Eater <\/a>in an excellent 2017 history of the Cheesecake Factory.<\/p>\n

As for Overton, he revealed to the Associated Press in 1998 that he sometimes consulted with an astrologer to pick the right date to open new locations.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think that Cheesecake Factory is a lot like Southern California because there\u2019s a very eclectic group of people that live in California that come from all parts of the country,\u201d David Gordon, president of the company, told Vice in a 2016 oral history. <\/a><\/p>\n

There are now Cheesecake Factories everywhere. And somewhere along the way, it became cool to be snarky about them. The oversize menus. The excessive portions. The legendary caloric values. The look that seems so out of place in a culture of clean modern lines.<\/p>\n

Writer Christina Catherine Martinez wrote an essay for Image magazine citing the <\/a>Cheesecake Factory as an early example of a \u201cEuro-blend\u201d style of architecture that has swept L.A. shopping centers and apartments in the last two decades. It \u201chas much to do with real estate scions fancying themselves purveyors of a new Renaissance, but the buildings themselves are less inspired by Renaissance principles than vague stabs at worldliness.\u201d<\/p>\n

But is the Cheesecake Factory trying to be tasteful \u2014 or something else? <\/p>\n

Asked about the collision of styles that marked his restaurant interiors, Overton once explained it this<\/a> way: \u201cI wanted something timeless.\u201d<\/p>\n

He succeeded. Because in the graveyard of closed \u201cit\u201d L.A. restaurants, the Cheesecake Factory is still going strong<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Times librarian Cary Schneider contributed to this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On the night Erik and Lyle Menendez killed their parents, they offered an elaborate, twisted and ultimately unbelievable…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":514283,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[120102,7,79526,9,8,159588,197850,22632,418,167140,23834,1741,197852,197851,4722,8804,1459,3020],"class_list":["post-514282","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-california","tag-architectural-style","tag-california","tag-california-dream","tag-california-headlines","tag-california-news","tag-cheesecake-factory","tag-fancy-place","tag-food-festival","tag-history","tag-inspiration","tag-look","tag-lot","tag-lousy-president","tag-luxury-experience","tag-most-people","tag-multiple-time","tag-part","tag-president-trump"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/514282","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=514282"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/514282\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/514283"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=514282"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=514282"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=514282"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}