Our Cheesecake Day!

We had a great night!

Wanting to beat normal dinner crowds, Walt went into work early today. We got to The Cheesecake Factory at 4:15pm. There were crowds of people waiting to be seated. We wanted to sit in the bar area to take advantage of the food specials during happy hour and it was completely full so we went ahead and put our name in for a table.

While waiting in line for a pager, the woman behind us said that she was willing to buy cheesecake to go at the regular price. (The $1.50 special was for dine-in guests only.) They told her it would be a 25 minute wait to get a slice TO GO!!! We get to the hostess stand and they quote us a 60-80 minute wait.

We take our pager, turn around, and walk through the tables one more time. We get towards the other end of the restaurant and there is a table that was occupied before but now is completely open! Someone had just left! (The bar sections are smoke-free here! YAY!)

We sit down, Walt returns the pager, order our food specials, and remembering what the woman in line told us, decide to order our cheesecake up front so it will arrive in time for dessert! It worked out perfectly!

We get our waters, our food including super fresh bread, and then our cheesecake. They were out of my favorite kind (fresh strawberry) so I venture into a new flavor. I have tried about 12 kinds in the past but keep coming back to fresh strawberry. I ordered fresh banana cream and it was delicious!

I'm enjoying the moment and Walt's digging into his latest favorite flavor, dulce de leche caramel, and the film crew from Channel 11 comes running up to film us eating cheesecake! They film us and tell us to pretend they're weren't there. (Easier said than done!) Then they interview Walt and take his name. They were with us for at least 5 minutes!!

We watched the news tonight and at the very very end, they have a 10 second plug about Cheesecake Day at the location we were at. (Arlington) The crew was there for a long time! None of our footage got used but it was fun! They reported that people waited up to 3 hours for a table! (We were there for only an hour and still got home in plenty of time for our hour walk!)

Thank you, Lord, for spoiling us tonight: no traffic each way, no wait for a table, food that was delicious and very affordable, a super sweet waitress, and a delicious flavor of cheesecake to add to my favorites!