The Cheesecake Factory Menu Items We'll Be Losing In 2025 And What To Order Instead

Despite its name, there's much more to The Cheesecake Factory than its sweet treats. Much, much more. The restaurant chain is renowned for its behemoth menu, home to everything from different flavors of its namesake to dishes as varied as shrimp, tacos, shepherd's pie, and shawarma. With a total of over 250 items on said menu, the real challenge is narrowing down your top pick — something made all the more difficult by the fact that The Cheesecake Factory likes to introduce even more items twice a year.

With that in mind, it's no surprise that the chain also routinely axes items from its lineup. Considering the sheer variety of its offerings and its proclivity for introducing new dishes, the alternative would be to keep ballooning the menu until it graduates from a novella-length entity to a full-blown novel. The Cheesecake Factory goes to impressive extents to ensure efficiency in its kitchens, and slashing less popular dishes is one of the easiest ways to maintain order. Its latest round of cuts has seen 13 items ditched from the lineup. The good news, however, is that there are perfectly delicious — and, in some cases, extremely similar — substitutes you can order in their place.

The Everything Flatbread Pizza was, as the name suggests, stacked with a long list of toppings. Crispy pepperoni was combined with the likes of onions, mushrooms, and peppers to create a hefty feast of a flatbread. Sadly, it seems like customers weren't totally won over by its OTT flavor profile. The Cheesecake Factory dropped it from its menu in March 2025, leaving a string of slightly less elaborate flatbreads in its wake.

While all of The Cheesecake Factory's flatbreads are respectable menu items, one does a better job at filling the void left by the Everything Flatbread Pizza than others. Like the latter, the Bee Sting Flatbread Pizza is topped with impressive amounts of meat and veggies. Like the Everything Flatbread Pizza, this includes pepperoni, as well as sprinkles of Italian sausage, bacon, Calabrian Chiles, cheese, vodka sauce, and honey. It's got more of a kick than the Everything Flatbread Pizza and has more of a sweet and smoky flavor profile, but it's a worthy successor to the über-filling menu item.

A lot of Americans hate the texture of mushrooms, but they're still a regular occurrence at burger joints nationwide. Back in March, however, The Cheesecake Factory seemingly took the side of the anti-mushroom brigade when it decided to ditch its most fungi-laden burger. A beef patty topped with melted cheese and an abundance of sautéed mushrooms is no longer an option when you drop by the chain. There is, however, an alternative that can get you pretty close to the experience, just as long as you're willing to forgo the beef.

The Cheesecake Factory's Factory Turkey Burger features a patty containing a mishmash of turkey, mushrooms, and garlic. That means you don't necessarily get the textural variety of a stack of mushrooms, but you can enjoy a similar (or similar-ish) flavor profile. There's also a version of the burger on The Cheesecake Factory's controversial SkinnyLicious menu if you'd prefer to order something lighter in calories. This ditches the bun made with the restaurant's iconic brown bread and the garlic aioli but is still packed with a fair amount of fungi flavor.

One of the many victims in The Cheesecake Factory's latest menu cull is the Seared Ahi Tuna Salad. The chain's rare seared tuna has received strong reviews from customers, which is why you may be pleased to know that it hasn't disappeared from its kitchens for good.

Upon axing the Seared Ahi Tuna Salad in March, The Cheesecake Factory introduced an extremely similar replacement. Its new Seared Tuna Tataki Salad also uses sushi-grade ahi tuna, bulking out the rest of the dish with avocado, tomato, sesame, soy, cilantro, and a generous amount of mixed greens. Drizzled atop the already delicious combo is a shallot vinaigrette. Customers seem equally impressed with the restaurant's newest seared tuna salad, which also happens to be up there with some of its healthiest offerings. While ahi tuna is lower in heart-healthy omega-3 fatty acids than other types of tuna, it still provides a strong dose of vitamin D and protein. There's also a long list of nutrients and vitamins to be enjoyed from the many veggies served alongside the fish.

When it comes to discontinuation, 2025 isn't White Chicken Chili's first rodeo. The Cheesecake Factory previously brought back the dish — a dish so beloved that it's sparked a wave of copycat recipes — in 2023 after previously deciding it no longer had a spot on the menu. Whether it makes a similar decision in the future remains to be seen, so in the meantime, we recommend tucking into the restaurant's Mexican Chicken and Tortilla Soup instead.

Admittedly, the dish isn't quite as filling as the meal we just lost. On the flavor front, however, it does contain a lot of the same components and delivers a similar warm hug-in-a-bowl sensation. While you'll find the dish listed under the Soup of the Day section of the menu, the Mexican Chicken and Tortilla Soup is served daily. If that still doesn't hit the spot, the good news is that The Cheesecake Factory actually previously shared the recipe for the dish, so you can always try whipping up a helping in your own kitchen.

Spicy Cashew Chicken, we hardly knew ye. The Cheesecake Factory only introduced the dish — which served pieces of spicy chicken with green onion and cashews — in March 2024 but they still decided to cut its lifespan short. Despite a wealth of fans professing their love for its spicy sauce and crispy exterior, it seems like the dish wasn't popular enough to justify taking up prime real estate on the chain's menu.

While there's no exact substitute for the Spicy Cashew Chicken, The Cheesecake Factory's Bang-Bang Chicken and Shrimp does a decent job of hitting the spot. A delicious combo of chicken and shrimp is sautéed with steamed vegetables and served atop a bed of fluffy white rice. While its peanut, chile, coconut, and curry flavors aren't the same as those found in the Spicy Cashew Chicken, you get a similarly satisfying balance of sweet and spicy.

If you're not keen on shrimp or want something with less of a kick, another viable alternative is the Orange Chicken. Again, this dish goes down the sweet and spicy route, but it definitely leans more towards the former. Again, this is served with a hefty helping of rice, and like everything else from The Cheesecake Factory, will do a good job of keeping you satiated long after you finish eating.

There's no shortage of shrimp at The Cheesecake Factory, but there's one less option on the menu since March when the powers that be decided to pull the Bistro Shrimp Pasta. During its run, the dish contained heaps of spaghetti interspersed with crispy shrimp, mushrooms, tomatoes, and arugula mixed with a creamy basil-garlic-lemon sauce.

There are plenty of copycat recipes out there that come close to replicating the dish. If you're looking for something to step up and take its place while actually dining at the restaurant, however, your best bet is the Fettuccini Alfredo with Shrimp. This bathes shrimp — albeit non-crispy shrimp — in a creamy sauce and pairs it with a generous helping of fettuccini. There are fewer veggies at play with this dish (by which we mean there are no veggies whatsoever), but if you're okay with skipping the nutrients for one meal, then this is the closest you'll get to the long-lost Bistro Shrimp Pasta.

Alternatively, if you want at least one serving of vegetables in your pasta, you could also opt for the Cajun Jambalaya Pasta. This tosses chicken into the linguine alongside shrimp, as well as tomatoes, onions, and peppers. Just bear in mind that, as the name suggests, it's spicier than either of the aforementioned dishes.

We're not sure who at The Cheesecake Factory decided to conduct a mass shrimp exodus in March, but they struck another off the lineup with the Fried Shrimp Platter. This has been on the menu for years, offering customers copious amounts of crispy shrimp, fries, and coleslaw. Nothing can quite take its place, but there are plenty of shrimp-laden alternatives that come pretty close.

The Crispy Pineapple Chicken and Shrimp may be significantly more flavorful than the Fried Shrimp Platter, tossing its meat in a delectably sweet and spicy sauce, but it feels like a natural progression for anyone who purely wants as much crispy shrimp on their plate as possible. If you have a more neutral flavor palate and prefer something a little more straightforward, you may have to forgo the shrimp and order chicken instead. For example, Chicken Littles pairs mashed potatoes with fried chicken tenders and buttered corn, hitting a lot of the same notes as the Fried Shrimp Platter from a flavor perspective.

The steak section of The Cheesecake Factory's menu is padded out with the likes of Spicy Ginger Beef Tenderloin, Steak Frites, and Steak Diane. Since March, one steak option you won't find on the menu is the Petite Filet. Like all steaks of its kind, this was billed as a smaller version of a filet mignon, offering tender meat with a side of mashed potatoes and green beans. While some naysayers claim that you should avoid The Cheesecake Factory if you're looking for quality steak, the dish still had its fair share of fans during its heyday.

If you're a meat-and-potatoes kind of person, it's not difficult to find a replacement for the Petite Filet. The most obvious choice is (drumroll please) The Cheesecake Factory's Filet Mignon. Groundbreaking, we know. It offers a near-identical dining experience, with the exact same sides and equally juicy meat. The only difference here is that your filet won't be, well, petite. Personally, we rarely see a bigger steak as a bad thing. Speaking as a fellow former Petite Filet devotee, we would take this as a green light to indulge in a slightly heftier steak on your next trip to The Cheesecake Factory.

The Cheesecake Factory only offers brunch on Saturdays and Sundays, but that doesn't mean customers are totally deprived of breakfast foods on weekdays. Eggs and omelets are available at the restaurant any day, any time. Sadly, customers are now short of one option, with The Cheesecake Factory pulling its Loaded Mashed Potato Omelette from the menu in March.

Admittedly, nothing quite comes close to replicating the Loaded Mashed Potato Omelette. Beloved by fans (but clearly not enough to make it a long-term staple), it was a glorious amalgamation of mashed potatoes, bacon, onion, and cheese, served with a side of toast and breakfast potatoes. There's no way to get mashed potatoes into your omelet at the chain as of right now, but you can try to replicate the other elements of the dish by ordering a custom dish. The Cheesecake Factory's Factory Create an Omelette option will allow you to choose four fillings from bacon, ham, avocado, peppers, mushrooms, asparagus, spinach, bell peppers, tomatoes, red or green onions, and various kinds of cheese to tailor an omelet to your liking. We're still mourning the mashed potatoes, but it's a comfort to know the chain still offers the chance to come up with a concoction even better than the Loaded Mashed Potato Omelette.

Beyond omelets, The Cheesecake Factory boasts a lineup of egg options to give you a tasty breakfast fix at any time of day. First introduced in early 2024, the Taco Dorados and Eggs combined a filled taco with eggs and slices of tomato to put a morning meal spin on a classic dish.

One year later, this dish sadly met the axe. That's right, Tacos Dorados are officially no more at The Cheesecake Factory. There is, however, a long list of other eggy options to satiate a similar craving. If it's the amalgamation of breakfast flavors in a Mexican-inspired dish you're after, look no further than the Breakfast Burrito. Available on Saturdays and Sundays, this stuffs a warm corn tortilla with the likes of scrambled eggs, bacon, chicken chorizo, avocado, and melted cheese, served with sides of sour cream, salsa, and black beans. It may not be the healthiest dish in the world — in fact, the Center For Science In The Public Interest once singled out The Cheesecake Factory dish in its 2018 Xtreme Eating Awards, claiming it was one of the worst ways to start your day — but it definitely delivers on the flavor front.

Like the rest of SkinnyLicious menu, the Lemon Herb Parmesan Chicken was lighter on calories than your average dish at The Cheesecake Factory. Sautéed chicken breast was enhanced with Parmesan, tomatoes, garlic, and basil and served with asparagus for a decent helping of protein and antioxidants.

As one of the many menu items culled in March 2025, the Lemon Herb Parmesan Chicken is no longer an option for anyone perusing The Cheesecake Factory's SkinnyLicious menu. The good news is that there's still a handful of other alternatives that serve a similar need, with the closest in essence to the Lemon Herb Parmesan Chicken being the Tuscan Chicken. Grilled chicken acts as the protein source, with tomatoes, artichokes, capers, basil, and a balsamic vinaigrette, plus fresh veggies and faro, bulking out the rest of the dish.

If the citrus flavor was what made the Lemon Herb Parmesan Chicken a standout in your eyes, we also recommend the Lemon-Garlic Shrimp. This time, sautéed shrimp is the star of the show, drenched in a tomato and lemon-garlic sauce and accompanied by both asparagus and angel hair pasta.

The SkinnyLicious menu took yet another hit in March with the loss of its Spicy Shrimp Pasta. While you can no longer order rigatoni with tomato sauce, Parmesan, and a handful of shrimp, The Cheesecake Factory has actually shared its recipe for the dish, meaning you don't necessarily need a substitute to recover from the loss.

If you do want something similar at the restaurant itself, the Lemon-Garlic Shrimp is the closest match on the SkinnyLicious menu. While it won't tickle your tastebuds quite as much as its spicier counterpart, it does provide a similarly calorie-light combo of shrimp and pasta. If you're willing to branch out beyond the SkinnyLicious menu, a more accurate substitute is the Cajun Jambalaya Pasta. Pairing shrimp with chicken, the spicy Cajun sauce should, theoretically, provide a similar kick. However, definitely don't tuck into the dish expecting it to set your tastebuds ablaze. Some customers have denounced it as one of the worst menu items at The Cheesecake Factory, claiming it's nowhere near as hot as you'd expect from a Cajun-inspired dish. We'll leave it up to you and your tastebuds to decide whether that's a good or a bad thing.