The Logic Behind The Cheesecake Factory's Ridiculous Menu

Anyone who's taken an AP English class will know that some of the greatest novels in American literature are seriously hefty. Books like "Moby-Dick," "Gravity's Rainbow," and "Infinite Jest" are known for being formidably large. And, while these classic works are in an echelon of their own, there is a new member of the canon: David Marshall Overton's giddy, Swiftian satire of American excess, "The Cheesecake Factory Menu."

At 20 pages, this menu is no "Blood Meridian," but it's way, way longer than a menu has any right to be. The Cheesecake Factory offers such a wide variety of dishes, including burgers, pizzas, pasta, tacos, and steak, that it almost feels like a mistake — as though an improv group started to "yes-and" their way through all the world's cuisines sometime in the '70s and couldn't bring themselves to stop. While this extensive menu is in keeping with The Cheesecake Factory's extravagant interior design, it can leave people wondering how the chain came to have such a huge menu.

Well, Overton, the founder of The Cheesecake Factory, is the man to blame. Basically, he set about expanding the menu after the restaurant's initial success and wildly overreached: partly out of naivete, partly out of the classic capitalist desire to kneecap competition. He didn't want to have any other restaurants in the vicinity, so he expanded the menu as much as he could to cover almost every imaginable taste. Could his customers conceivably want pizza? Pizza went on the menu. Chinese potstickers? On the menu. Steak Diane, ahi poke, fettuccine Alfredo? Menu, menu, menu.

Although it might come as a surprise, David Marshall Overton did not set out to open a multi-cuisine restaurant. In fact, he started The Cheesecake Factory in 1978 mostly as a way to sell his mother's baked goods. He was not exactly an experienced chef, and, knowing his limitations, tried to keep the menu as simple and cheesecake-centric as possible. (That sound you heard was the universe groaning to accommodate this cosmic irony.) The original menu only had around 60 items listed on it. 

Soon enough, however, Overton discovered he had a real knack for running a restaurant, and planned on expanding the menu to match his new capabilities. At first, Overton cast a wide net, sampling as much food from other restaurants as he could to narrow down his options and figure out the new direction. Then, after a while, he decided he didn't need to narrow down his options after all and simply started adding new dishes that he thought Americans would like. Not all of them have been hits, as our list of the best and worst Cheesecake Factory menu items proves, however, the majority found a receptive audience.

Generally, a smaller, more focused menu is seen as preferable to a menu with a bit of everything. But, improbably, Overton's approach worked. Nowadays, The Cheesecake Factory is seen as the place to go for groups and families who cannot decide on a single cuisine, and The Cheesecake Factory is doing so well that it is partly responsible for keeping our economy afloat.