The Greatest Generation - The Locus of Spice (Factory Seconds E2 - Bonus Episode)

Episode Date: March 15, 2023

When Ben and Adam bring their second helping of Factory Seconds out from behind the paywall, they learn one entree is actually two and leftovers are part of the deal. But a hit segment has to get left out this time, so they get to know The Americana and its regulars instead. What’s it like to live the Bublé lifestyle? How many appetizer sections does this menu have? Where is The Cheesecake Factory prepared to challenge the palate? It’s the episode that uses a green onion ribbon rating system!

Friends of DeSoto, you may have heard that Ben and I have a secret side project going on in the bonus feed. We do. I mean, we've got a couple of secret side projects, but this one, the most delicious secret side project. I'm talking about factory seconds, the show or Ben and I go to different cheesecake factory restaurants and order different menu items every time we go. Yeah, this is something we've been having a lot of fun with over there in the bonus content feed,

which is normally only available to max fund members, people who support the show. Right. But we thought much like a drug dealer, we would let you have a little taste for free. Wow. Yeah. like a drug dealer, we would let you have a little taste for free. Wow. Yeah. I mean, for many people, this is the best thing that we do as professional podcasters this show, Factory Seconds. So many people are like, especially people in my life, like the kind of people in my life who support the greatest generation, but do not listen to the greatest generation because they love me, but don't care about my work, have texted me, man, I just really

love factory seconds. I wish you'd do more stuff like that. Yeah. I wish you could do things that I could tell other people about. So we thought we would bring one of these out from behind the pay while I think this is the second ever episode of Factory Seconds. Yeah, this is when we really got our feet under us. This is when I think we figured out what the show was. Yeah, yeah. So I hope you enjoy this episode of Factory Seconds as a little thank you for sticking with us through all these years. And if you support the show, you can hear the rest of our episodes, right? Yeah. Plus a bunch of Santa Monica Mountains episodes, plus a bunch of movies that we've reviewed, including many Star Trek films. Oh yeah. And like tons of animated series and original

series episodes and like episodes of greatest track that are like our attempt at making a true crime podcast. We're busy in the bonus feed. It's not just for birthdays and anniversaries. Like we're hitting the bonus feed pretty often. Yeah. We're maintaining clean lifestyle so that we can hit the bonus feed as often as we like. Yeah. Eating clean, taking good showers, putting things in the bonus feed. That's what you and I are doing. Yeah, keep it stretched out nicely, you know?

The bonus feed doesn't self lubricate, that's something that we've got to do. That's something we learned through experience. Yeah. So anyways, enjoy this food. Right. Right. No, but we really, really appreciate Anyways, enjoy this food. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right.

Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right.

Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right.

Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right? Right. Right. Don't let this scare you away. Yeah, neutral at minimum. Yeah, it's like picking a vice presidential candidate. First, do no harm. That's what this is.

It's factory seconds episode two. Here you go. I think we have like orange chicken in this one. Eat up. I think we have like orange chicken in this one eat up Your table is ready at factory seconds The show that doesn't just love the cheesecake factory, we celebrate their entire menu. I'm Adam Pranica. I've been Harrison.

What do you think of that? That was good. That's making me wonder if in the last episode of Factory Seconds, you said your name. Oh, I don't know if I did. Oh wow. Well, you know, I don't know if I did. Oh, wow. Well, well, you know, I don't think anything I said on that show was a value to anyone. And I would rather not be quoted

for anything I say on the show. Yeah, this is behind the paywall. Yeah. What happens behind the paywall stays behind the paywall. How about new, very safe space. I'm really excited about this second episode of Factory Seconds. People didn't think we were going to come back for another round, but after the humiliation of the first episode, where most people thought it was just a bad outcome, to a bad idea. Yeah, we shouldn't be doing this, but we are. And we're only doing it because of the support of the friends of DeSoto supporters of a podcast with a totally different bad premise. You can make this show stop anytime by withdrawing your support. No, for both shows.

They made their decisions. We're just having a great time doing factory seconds. We're huge cheesecake factory fans now. What you want to do is get two people who work together and socialize together. Another reason to do things together. No downside to that. We're just daring each other to get sick of this whole situation at this point. Hey, maybe we should pull the curtain back a little bit.

Same visit to cheesecake factory that we're talking about this time. Ooh, scandalous. As last time, we thought, you know, like this is something we do when we record the greatest generation. We'll often watch two episodes of Star Trek and then record two episodes of our show on the same outing.

Do people know that? And sometimes it gets us in trouble, you know? There's the legendary episode in which we whip out the fuck bokeh moniker. Be like taking a few ground balls. It was the second episode of two recorded on a day where the first one wasn't a joke. So we had to get super drunk. So I mean, this is a much classier

operation. We're keeping it very sober. Factory seconds. I mean, I did have a Tiki drink at noon today, but we're actually gonna get a second portion on factory seconds. It seems like the name would indicate doubling down. Yeah. I mean, I feel like in some ways, I have seen two entrees, cheesecake factory, and both of them were so big that I felt like I was having seconds by the time I kind of rounded halfway through the place. Yeah. You know, so I think seconds are kind of built into the experience there in some ways.

Right. I mean, by saying that this is the second of a double-header episode that we've recorded in the same sitting, you've just allowed us from beginning the show with our hit segment, how did we get to the cheesecake factory? Now I don't know what to do. I think the only thing to do is... You know what? Here's what we can do. There's so much more that we can say about the Galleria

and our experience at the Americana at Brand. Let's talk about the fountain. Let's talk about the people watching. So much was going on there. One thing I didn't mention in our last episode of the hit bonus podcast. Factory seconds. Was how in the outside patio area, yeah, there seemed to be two gentlemen

wearing very dark clothing underneath an umbrella, wearing big old gold chains. Wow. Just sipping on some coffee, looking out at the people, as if it were a scene out of the sopranos. There's coffee in there. Gavagool. Right. How cool would it be if the cheesecake factory was just your spot? It is to whatever organized crimes indicate these gentlemen were members of what the

pork store is to Tony and the gang. It was a very satrials type type of vibe for sure. I also want to mention that while the cheesecake factory faces the boulevard, there is no entrance on the boulevard. You have to go into the Americana complex. Right. In order to go in there, this is something that confounded me when I first arrived last time, about 20, 25 minutes late. Yeah. Looking for the entrance was a thing that added time. There is a thing, I don't know if this is a thing in other car life oriented cities, but I spent 15 years of my adult life in New York before moving here. And one thing that has persistently surprised me about LA is that you'll be going to a pharmacy or a restaurant or something.

And you'll be on a major thoroughfare and you will see the building of the thing you're going to and you will park and get out and then you will find out that you have to walk almost all the way around the block to go through their parking lot to get into the thing. Bullshit, man. And it's just like a design choice that many, many places make, and the Americana brand is maybe the most significant example of this type of architecture in the Southland because it's an outdoor mall. It's a bunch of stores that are outdoors, but you cannot enter any of them from the major streets that surround the Americana. You have to go inside of the Americana to interact with it at all. It makes a lot of sense in that same way that the governing philosophy of grocery store

layout works where you want to walk through the grocery store to get your gallon of milk. At the Americana brand, you're going to want to pass your H&M and your Apple store and your little hut that sells hats and sunglasses before getting to the cheesecake factory. Right. Right. Yeah. So I mean, if you aren't familiar, the American brand is the kind of outdoor mall that has become more and more popular in the last 20 years or so. It is a mixed-use development. There is a huge parking structure, but there are also apartments there. Yeah. There is a huge parking structure, but there are also apartments there. I think it's a five over one building, which is a type of building that new urbanists are really pushing.

There are lots and lots of people that live at the Americana. It's got a movie theater. It's got trolleys. I trolleys. Never heard of Makefully. It's got snow in the wintertime. The wintertime's got snow in the wintertime. The winter it's got snow. It's got a very lively like mini bellagio fountain.

I don't know what happened to the grass, but one thing I noticed while I was there today is that they were completely re-sodding all of the grass surrounding the fountain. They were like putting in squares of fresh sod and like watering it. I wonder if the dogs had gotten to it. There were a number of dogs being walked around the property. Yeah, it was fun to see some pups. You get a number of dogs just rocketing their piss and to grass.

That's gonna burn out in that sun. Yeah, that's true. It's like getting a burn on your skin because you've been cutting up lines, right? Yeah. Yeah, that's exactly it. Normally I wouldn't go for this. your skin because you've been cutting up lines, right? Yeah. Yeah, that's exactly it. Yeah, that's exactly it. Normally, I wouldn't go for this.

The cynical vagusification of a shopping mall. Yeah. I'm a long time fan of Las Vegas. I like my vagus in Vegas, though. I like it very specifically. And I have to admit, very nice property. It's nice to walk around. Feels good.

Feels good. Feels good to walk around. I don't shop at most of the stores that are there, you know, it's largely kind of like high-end boutiques. There's like a Tiffany and... Do you tend to shop, period in stores? I don't feel like I do. And this predates pandemic, shopping culture too. I mean, there's like a j-crew in there that I've gone into once or twice to get a shirt or a pair of pants. I've gone to that Apple store many times. One of the great Apple stores. Our business has a corporate account with that Apple store.

Yeah. Makes it convenient to go there and pick up some material and then grab some lunch. Yeah. There was a time when I was considering purchasing a Tesla and we went to the Tesla store there. This was before we moved and we didn't have off-street parking so we spent 20 or 30 minutes in there talking to one of the salespeople about what it would be like to live a lifestyle, having an electric car, but nowhere to charge it permanently. Come on. What's it going to take to get you into a Tesla today? And they just

laughed and laughed. Well, what they suggested was we've got fast chargers here at the Americana, so you could just bring it here once so you can charge up. Wow. And then you'd have to go to the Americana every week. I was like, I turned to my wife and I was like, this sounds like it may be a great deal for us and she's had absolutely fucking not.

No way. I mean, maybe she would have been cooler about it if you had also suggested moving into the Americana and living in one of their condos. I'm very curious about what the apartments are like. I mean, I'm sure I could find this if I went on Zillow or something, but yeah, it seems like kind of a door man building. Like, it seems like it would be on the higher end of apartment types. I'm sure that someone has an idea of what it would be like before living there.

That could be positive. And then either it is confirmed in a big time way where they're like this fucking rules. I never have to buy my own ice cream again. I can just go down to the hog and doesn't get it. Or it fucking sucks because you're hearing the same Michael Booblay song every 15 minutes outside your cracked open balcony sliding door, you know? I know what you're thinking and I agree. This is a bad idea.

Do you want to be a part of the Americana by living there or do you want to shut it out? It's like those places that like our developments that Disney creates, where there are people that are really drawn to that as a lifestyle, and I think that there are other people that would find it absolutely maddening. And that thing about the Boo Blaze, no joke, there is crooneroner like Sinatra and similar type music playing at all times at the Americana. Boo Blaze or equivalent. And and in the winter it is Christmas music of that kind. All the time. And if you live there, it's got to be a thing that you just kind of have in the background. All the time, you must be so much more acutely aware of the seasons of the year.

If you live there, then anywhere else in California, because that's the knock on living here. It's like, there's one season. How can you live that way? You live at the Americana. You know the seasons. You know what season it is. seasons. You know what season it is. Yeah. Rick Caruso is the lunatic billionaire developer that created the Americana. Is he a good billionaire Ben? Nope. There's no such thing at him. By definition, if you have a billion dollars, you are a terrible person. In what ways is he bad? Uh, he is the kind of, well, so if you have a billion dollars,

it means you've exploited labor to get that kind of money. And what's going on here seems pretty unethical. Of course. And if you don't exploit labor, you will never get a billion dollars. It's true. But also he is like the kind of billionaire that occasionally implies that he thinks

he would be like a good mayor of Los Angeles. And he's like, I'm all about public transportation. Just look at the trolleys that are on all of the fucking idiotic malls that I've built all over Los Angeles. That's amazing. And like really thinks that that is like the solution is slow-moving trolleys in densely packed parts of the city that aren't connected to each other.

No, they would never be connected. Yeah. I always think of that music as being probably something that he specifically wanted, because I don't know who else wants that type of music. It is extremely inoffensive as a playlist, totally fine as a setting, like the fountains and the sunshine and the music and the dogs this entire thing just makes for a very pleasant place to be. It's kind of a

remarkable achievement because I don't know if you showed me the plan for this on paper if I would believe that Southern Californians would want this kind of experience, given what a car culture it is. It's not like stand by a car, it's not your race car. But there's such a dearth of places where you can walk around and go from shop to shop and be a wannabe gangster, sitting outdoors drinking a coffee and watching the world go by.

It fills a need. It's like a corny fake corporate version of a thing that you can naturally experience in many cities, but in LA, that's just not an experience that's available to most people. It exists because it works. That one time we went to go see a movie at the Americana brand many years ago,

and then we walked outside and it was snowing. Yeah, it was a... A rival, I believe, was the movie we saw. And it was snowing. Yeah, it was a snowing. A rival, I believe, was the movie we saw. And it was snowing and the Christmas music was in full swell at that point. A rum-fuck-a-pum-pum. I was caught up in it. Yeah. I fucking loved it.

It was so magical. It was amazing. I keep wanting to catch that dragon I've been chasing. It works. It works in a way that it shouldn't on paper. Yeah. It's a, it's a weird thing. Do you think that those gangster guys run a protection racket at the Americana and they go into the like end other stories and the Amazon four stars and up store and the Barnes and Noble and get like a envelope full of money from the manager.

Yeah, the thugs of the Americana brand doing their dirty work in in broad daylight. This is a lot of daylight. You don't got an envelope. This is a comedy series that I really want to see. Yeah, it would be better than the many saints of Newark probably. Oh, I like the many Saints of Newark. It's a nice same-sung galaxy store you got here. It would be a shame if something happened to it.

I pinky swear with you that I will not be watching that movie ever again. Oh, but I thought it was great. I thought Bobby Moynihan did really good job as a young Tony. Yeah. Did I already do that joke on a show? I think you did it for me. Oh, okay. And because every conversation needs to be recorded

and monetized between us. Ben and Adam don't talk if we're not gonna try and get a nickel out of the situation. Well, I think we've done a pretty good job setting the scene, Ben. And I think maybe for the next episode, we'll have to bring back the, how did we get there segment, the hit segment of our hit behind the paywall show. I think before we move on, what we should do is apologize to people that we didn't really

get to do that hit segment this time because that's probably the most popular segment on factory seconds. What we tell our listeners, our fans of the show, if you could call them that, all the time is that you need to listen to all the episodes. The cheeseheads we call them. To really get a sense for the extended factory seconds podcast universe. Right. Yeah, it's a lot like the retail nightmares podcast.

For there are probably four dozen segments, but you never know which ones you're going to get. Yeah, the the wiki for factory seconds. Like extremely short, extremely short. Yeah, I mean, you might get the segment. What was your favorite dog you saw walking by the cheesecake factor? Right. It might be what would you have bought at the Apple store near the cheesecake factory if you had bought something?

What was your favorite Michael Bubley song that you heard while sitting outside at the Americana? So many different options, but we should get into the food, right? We really should. Everything on the cheesecake factory menu. Neither amazing nor disappointing. Just pretty good. All the way through. All right Adam. We started with an appetizer for this meal. An appetizer that I kind of ordered without asking whether you did.

Because we weren't really sure what form this show would take if we were going to each order things and then talk about what we ordered on the show If we were gonna order stuff and share it and then talk about it in that way Factory seconds is about a lot of things and it could be about different things all the time And I think this is probably something we're trying to figure out as we go whether or not we are going to order things at each other Right, well whether we're gonna order things and share them family style. With this instance, I think we decided to get things and share them. Why don't we get a couple of dishes and we'll just share them.

What are you getting? That may change as we do future episodes. Yeah, I mean, I think that if we're talking about things we want to accomplish with the show, one of the things that I think that everybody knows about factory seconds is it's about us in conflict with each other. Right. And so, and it's also about accomplishing goals. Right.

And those two things working together makes me want to kind of order things that you would not want. Right. So a spicy shrimp dish without your consent is kind of the first thing that comes to mind. The aspect of this hang has been adjudicated previously. I showed up very late. Yes.

Giving Ben a lot of time to look at this giant menu. And almost the moment I sat down, ordering had commenced. And Ben then ordered the Dynamite Shrimp. I hope you like spicy food. This sure has a bite. This is crispy tempura shrimp with our spicy Dynamite sauce coming in at 500 calories, and $9.95 for this item from the small plates and snacks menu. Not the appetizer menu.

Don't get it twisted. Which was interesting because it definitely, not the appetizer menu. Don't get it twisted. Which was interesting because it definitely seemed like an appetizer portion. Yeah. And I would describe the breading on this shrimp as very like onion ring adjacent, that kind of shattery batter quality to it. When you see tempura,

what eye picture is a very light browning on the fry. And this was not. On a panko batter, and this was not panko batter. And it was quite dark ining on the fry. And this was not. On a panko batter. And this was not panko batter. And it was quite dark in terms of the color. It had puffed up nicely and pulled back from the shrimp in such a way that it gave you kind of a puffy fry texture to it. Which is something that I don't really love about onion rings.

Like I don't love it when the batter is so disconnected from the onion that when you bite into it, you might like pull the onion all the way out of the batter for your next bite. That never happened with these shrimps. It didn't. And also upon dropping a fork into a shrimp to pick it up to dip into the dynamite sauce,

there was no shattering of the bark texture of the fry. Yeah. It held together really nicely. It really did. I was impressed with these all the way around, even though they weren't quite what I was envisioning. The dynamite sauce is a creamy sauce. I'm guessing probably just like a chipotle Iole or something like that.

The other thing that is on this plate that we were both remarking on is it's got green onions. But they are, it almost looks like they like took a vegetable peeler to like a stack of green onions. Yeah. And stripped off like little curly cues. Because it's not, they're not like cut on the bias. They're not cut in just straight rings. They're like strips taken out of green onions

That kind of have curled up on the a almost a julienne to green onion. I Never seen this before it almost like like you know a fancy ribbon wrap on a present where you grab the scissors And you pull on that ribbon the curly curled up at the end. That's what these green onions were like. And it really inspired me. It's something that I want to do when I'm cooking things at home to give some different kind of structure to the green onions that I used. Yeah, because when you cut them up just in the way that you have always seen them, which is you make little rings of green onion. that you've always seen them, which is you make little rings of green onion. ["Greninion"]

You get a very even size and shape, and there was some variety to them. There were bigger and little or pieces, and it kind of made the dish more interesting to look at than I was expecting. They imparted a strong onion flavor to the thing too, in a way that I feel like the tiny rings of green onion frequently just read as garnish in the mouth. And I'm saying that even when I use them at home, like not a lot of onion flavor to green onions typically, but

when you get that nice long segment, the curly-cue green onion, like I definitely tasted it in a composed bite, and in the way that they had to be going for. Yeah, those gangster guys took a long look at the green onions and they said nice onions. And we weren't really sure how to take that. Anyway, return to your meal. Did you mention that this was off of the Entrez menu section

or the appetizer small plates? Because so, no, this is one of the things that blew me away, is that on the menu there are small plates and snacks section, an appetizer section, and an appetizer salad section. There's, those are three different sections. Yeah, I will say when, And this is from the small plates and snacks. When this plate was dropped on the table,

I was underwhelmed by the amount of shrimp on the plate. And I think part of this has to do with the size of the plate that they chose. It was a big ass square plate with kind of a large bowl of dynamite sauce in the middle. And then I'm counting eight shrimp. And these were not like, you know, like in the grading of shrimp, they're graded by how many shrimp are in a grading of shrimp, they're graded by how many shrimp are in a pound of shrimp. Right. I want to say that these are your medium, small size of shrimp. These are not like the big honkers that you see butter-flied at a seafood restaurant. This is like, I would say, a smaller

shrimp cocktail-sized shrimp. Yeah, they were a little uneven in shape. I wasn't quite sure what that was about if they'd been cut up or or something like they didn't have that shrimp curly Q shape to them. Yeah. You could put an entire shrimp in your mouth comfortably. And sometimes you get a size of shrimp like a jumbo shrimp in the aforementioned shrimp cocktail where you got to like take two or sometimes even three bites to take that thing down. Sometimes I find that uncomfortable. That's a that's a big ass piece of shrimp at that point. Right. I had to say these were really nicely cooked. They were just right in terms of how

well done they were. Like they weren't over, they weren't under. Yeah. They tasted really good. The dynamite sauce didn't have as much kick as I probably would have put into it had I made it myself. would have put into it had I made it myself. And I think that that's one of the things that I'm going to be looking for going forward on factory seconds is like where is the cheesecake factory prepared to challenge the palate. I saw a couple of things on the menu that listed spicy or I even saw one thing, I forget what it was, but it said it was very spicy. And I almost ordered that just because I was like, I want to see what very spicy means at a restaurant that is as like ecumenical as this one

is in what it's trying to appeal to. Based on our visit so far, I've got a lot of questions about what they mean by that. What mean very spicy, Rambo? As for that dynamite sauce, I did really enjoy it as a condiment. Yeah. But as you say, when you call us something dynamite, you have certain expectations about spiciness.

Setting the table for something. And I wanna say generally right now, something I wanna try to observe going forward is how insistent the cheesecake factory is on their level of spice and not yours. As far as condiments go on the table, like sometimes you'll go to a restaurant and there will be a selection of hot sauces

and salt and pepper or other condiments available to you. It's salt and pepper at the cheesecake factory and that is it. And there is not even a suggestion that there might be a hot sauce available if you asked for one. And I wonder if that's ever a thing. I wonder if we should try throwing that curveball at them and see what happens. What firework sauce needed. Dynamite sauce. Was some sriracha, maybe even like in terms of its plating, a nice big dot of sriracha in the middle of the dynamite sauce. Yeah, so you could either take or leave.

There's so much more dynamite sauce than you could ever use, even if you fully coated each piece of shrimp, you're never going to use up the amount that they give you. So if there was an area that was obviously where the locus of spice was, that you could mix into the sauce or sauce your shrimp and then get a little dab or avoid entirely, that'd be a nice customization. The locus of spice was the Frank Herbert book. I did not read. That was one of the sequels to do. Yeah, it's sort of the similirillion

of the Dune universe. Yep. That's just kind of a lot of details about how stuff got to be the way it is and whatnot. Not in the mood. Moods are thing for cattle and love play. Yeah. I would say a fine start to the meal

were those dynamite shrimp, but the main course was up to me. Yeah. You ordered the main in our last episode. I felt a distinct pressure to follow up with something very different. Yeah. Interestingly, we haven't really gotten out of the kind of Asian-inspired areas of the menu, and the main that we got is no exception. What did we get, Adam?

My eyes fell to this very quickly. It seemed as though it was the thing to get. It seems as though it has a reputation there that I was interested in chasing down and maybe confirming. The orange chicken was the entree that I ordered. Do you want me to give the menu description here? Yeah. All right, deep fried pieces of chicken breast

covered in a sweet and spicy orange sauce served with white rice and vegetables, 1,690 calories and those cells for $19.95. Much like so many things at Cheesecake Factory. Very generous portion. When this plate hit the table, I am usually not a white meat chicken and a fried and sauceed context person.

Yeah. And I will admit to you, this was, I was kind of throwing a challenge at this place. I was like, are you really gonna do orange chicken and not use thighs? Or like wings or something? Yeah, give me a break. So when this hit the table, I was like,

all right, let's see what you got. And when I dropped a fork through these fork tender, fried chicken and chicken nugs, it felt like dark meat. It was tender and juicy, like a dark meat piece of chicken. Yeah. And crispy and saucy, like you want to dish like this to be. The pieces of chicken were quite big, I want to say, like not quite golf ball in volume,

and they were longer than that implies. They weren't like round pieces, but they were bigger than I was expecting. I think when it's thigh, it's just a thinner piece of meat so that when you cut it up, it's never gonna be super big, but like it's hard to fry a piece of breast and have it be as juicy as these were all the way through.

Like the outside didn't feel overcooked or anything. And so often you get a segmented chicken in recognizable parts of a breast. I did not recognize anywhere on this plate. It seemed to be configured in a way like a jumble. I like the jumble. You ever do the jumble? In a very appetizing way. Yeah. You did make one modification. You ordered this with the brown rice. I did. And it served over carrots and snap peas and a couple of other little veggies. I was kind of surprised at how complex

the flavor of the orange chicken was. It was very noticeably orangey. There was orange zest as a garnish over the top of it. And even a little bit of orange pith bitterness in a couple of the bites. I did think that too, yeah. I like that, honestly, because it made it feel like it wasn't just sweet.

And I think that my main criticism of this dish is that it is too sweet overall, but it wasn't only sweet. And if it had been only sweet, it would have been kind of gross, I think. I've got to admit something to you, Ben, in that my real reason for ordering this dish was because I was expecting failure.

Because I expected something that was coiingly marmalade orange sweet and a fry that might have been like that soft fry that is just not crunchy anymore over sauce where there's just a lake of sauce at the bottom of the plate. I wanted to test this restaurant's ability to do it because I think when you look at this place from the outside that might be the assumption. Yeah. In those years where I looked down my nose at the cheesecake factory, I thought that was the sort of Warren's chicken they'd be serving inside, but I was pleasantly surprised in the same way you were. I'm a big fan of General Sos chicken, which is a similar preparation to orange chicken. And I, at one point, read the Wikipedia article about General Sos chicken, which is really interesting because in the first paragraph, it says the Hunan

Provence where General general so is from, does not serve anything that is even similar to general so's chicken that you get in a American Chinese restaurant. And that's because American Chinese restaurants are a distinct culinary tradition that is inspired by Chinese cooking, but has been tailored to the American palate

and has developed in a... It's a great immigrant success story. From what I've never been to China, but everybody that I know that has been will tell you don't go expecting to eat American-style Chinese food. They don't really have it there. And one of the things in the Wikipedia entry about this dish is that one of the chefs that claims to have developed it in the US emigrated back to China and opened a restaurant and it totally failed because the Chinese palate found it clawingly sweet. Right. Right. So I will admit that I like the sweetness of General

Soschik and I like the sweetness of orange chicken but I have had it where it's like way over done and I feel like it is a fine line between sweet in a way that is pleasing and sweet in a way that is disgusting and makes it taste like dessert chicken, which nobody wants. Not too sweet, please. Right, I feel like walnut shrimp is a version of that story, which is like dessert shrimp.

You know, I kinda like walnut shrimp. I do too, but it's nothing if it's not extremely sweet in most cases. A lot of sugar being brought to bear. I will say this was a pretty impressive execution given the high degree of difficulty. I was kind of thinking that might be where your head was at when you heard it, because I was like, oh man, that was not what I envisioned having for lunch today. I thought Adam might be going for like one of the burgers on the burger menu and we'd be cutting a burger in half or something like that. That was a surprise, but a not unpleasant surprise.

I think one of the fun things about the wide variety of kinds of foods on this menu is that on a day like today, I'm gonna feel like challenging the restaurant. On another visit, I'm going to feel more open to delight. It's an entree for every attitude, I think. Is that the tagline of the factory seconds podcast? Might be. Yeah. An attitude for every entree and an entree for every attitude. every entre and an entre for every attitude. The scoop of brown rice.

So much fucking. It was a lot of brown rice. And I will say as someone who was cooked a lot of it at home, it seemed underdone in the way that most brown races are. You got to soak the brown rice for a long time before cooking it. And it was just a little more toothsome than I was hoping for, a little more grainy, a little al dente. Yeah.

And in that way, you know what, you just can't miss with a white rice with orange chicken, like that's gonna slap every time. This is another. You specify brown just to throw another degree of difficulty onto the plate. I did. Yeah.

And in that way, maybe I set it up to fail in a way that I'm not proud of. I didn't hate it. I mean, I agree with you that it was like a little further on the al dente side than I'm used to it. It was pleasantly nutty in flavor though. It was.

It's a bit nutty. Ming-Sai's got a recipe for the rice that he makes at home for his kid. Oh, yeah. He does like half and half, right? He does, and that's the rice that I make in my household too. You soak the brown rice for a half an hour to an hour before you add the white rice and then cook as normal. Wow. And then both rice is cooked to the same desired structure at the end, and that's how you do it.

I love me a Mingsai recipe. It's like Arnold Palmer Rice. Wow, yeah. Uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, speaking of Arnold Palmer, and we move on to what you got to drink. Oh, yeah. Cheesecake Factory. Cheesecake.

Cheesecake. Cheesecake. Cheesecake Factory.cake. Cheesecake. This felt like another challenge leveled by me to the restaurant. Yeah. I had heard Cheesecake Factory has great coffee beverages. Yes. And I was like, how could it be? This is a fucking mall restaurant. Yeah. And being from Seattle, I have very specific feelings

about the quality of the coffee that I drink. I expected it to be thin and weak and bad. Dane and vile. And you ordered iced coffee. And when you said iced coffee, what I was picturing was the thing that always happens at places like this, which is they go fill a glass of ice, they pour a piping

hot, caraph of coffee over the ice, and they bring it out, and there is like half of one cube left floating at the top of a watery cup of coffee that is cold. You know before you drink it, that it's going to be bad. Right. And the response from our server who was excellent shocked me. She said to you, do you want iced coffee or cold brew? And I'll have one of the vanilla bullshit things, whatever you want, some vanilla bullshit,

latte, capa thing, whatever you got, I don't care. The fact that there are options when you're going into the cold coffee area of the menu. Maybe you shouldn't be surprised that there are options at cheesecake factory. Yeah, but it's like, I've always said that a place that is really good at coffee tends not to be great at food and vice versa. Like, if you go to a great restaurant, typically speaking, the coffee at the end of the meal

is going to be espresso and it'll be fine, but it won't be remarkable. It won't be excellent espresso. If you're lucky, that's not a hard and fast rule but great coffee operations. If you go to a coffee bar that really takes the coffee seriously, the best thing to get food-wise is usually a pastry that they are getting in from a good bakery in the area, not a sandwich or a thing that is being made on premises. So I ordered it to go and it came in a plastic to go cup with a plastic lid and a straw. And as soon as it hit the table, you observed that it looks in form factor and everything else like something you would get at Starbucks. And you suggested that maybe it was a Starbucks coffee.

I thought this was a reasonable assessment. The thing that said that to me more than anything was that the lid itself, not like perfectly clear the way those lids are at a gas station or at a regular non-chain coffee restaurant. They have a slight translucent to them and they seem like maybe a thicker grade plastic or something. By evoking the name Starbucks, what you did in this moment was prepare me for disappointment because I do not like Starbucks coffee. It's bad. I do not like their way of doing business.

I do not like Howard Schultz. So I look at this cup and I'm like, I'm just picturing somebody listening who doesn't know who Howard Schultz is and going like, who's Howard? Like what did he do? Here goes nothing. I take a great big sip of this cold brew coffee.

You looked at me and you were like, you need to take a sip of this. I did. I didn't say anything. I said try it and you did. I did. I didn't say anything. I said try it. And you did. I did. You pushed the cut back toward me and I was like, this is great. This is fucking spectacular.

It's not just great. It's distinct. Right. It's complex in a way I was not expecting. It was clearly cold brew and not any other form of coffee. It's maybe easier drinking than any cold brew I've had at a mass-produced scale. I had had a coffee bean and tea leaf iced coffee

before the meal. So you could comp it in very close proximity. Right, and one thing that I think coffee bean does really well is iced coffee and does really badly is cold brew. I think coffee beans cold brew is as bad as Starbucks cold brew. That has got to be the mistake that I do then when I go to coffee bean because I've routinely been disappointed by coffee bean coffee because I get the cold brew. Yeah, it seems like it would be better and it's not.

You see it on the menu and you're like, oh, well, if it's $4, it's gotta be great. But it's not always great. No, the iced coffee, like a large iced coffee at coffee being as like $3.18. And it's more than you get with the cold brew and it tastes better. This was so good that it makes me rethink my feelings about cheesecake factory,

even more than any food we've had up until now. If I am in need of a coffee as I usually am in the afternoon, I'm getting an afternoon cold brew from somewhere. I'm going to consider cheesecake factory coffee as a solution to that problem. I was surprised. We were trying to figure out if it's just coffee or if it's like stepped on, if it's got like, chickery in it or something. There is a like a background flavor and I described it as sort of a mocha quality to it where it's clearly not mocha and it's probably chickery,

but it's like if this cold brew were sat on a counter next to a bottle of Hershey syrup and they were just looking at each other for a while, that was kind of the vibe that it gave me. And I mean that as a compliment, there's something different going on here with this. I damn Jimmy, this is some serious gourmet shit. I mean this one would have been satisfied with some freeze-dried taste choice, right? I don't know if they have cheesecake factories in airports or not. One thing that is always a problem for me in airports is that coffee that is available in airports is typically awful.

And often it's going to be better than what you get on a plane even so you got to take what you can get. And one of the worst things that ever happened to me was when Delta moved which terminal they're in an LAX for a terminal that had coffee being to a terminal that had Starbucks. Yeah, I remember that it was one of the things to ever happen to you No amount of Delta cookies is gonna make that right never yeah, like you can't biscoff your way out of this problem Hey, maybe with the reopening of Terminal 2 post remodel, we're going to get a good coffee option there. Oh my God. You know, this is a very LA-centric show that we're recording right now.

I feel like we can talk freely about our myriad of issues with LAX. Oh, yeah. One of the best things that ever happened to me was I had a flight to, I think it was Austin, Texas, for a greatest gen live show that for no reason discernible to me left out of the Bradley International Terminal where they have a Lemil coffee, which is very expensive, but very good. How about that, a domestic flight out of an international harmonica? A short, domestic flight out of a terminal. Couldn't believe it. Did they have to bus you out to your plane?

I don't remember if it was a bus out to the plane situation. What I do remember is that I tried to go to the sky lounge with my credit card that's supposed to get you into the sky lounge, but because I didn't have an international ticket, I was not admitted entry. Wow. And that was a little bit of a kick in the teeth. That's not good Delta.

I'm taking a flight to New York next week. A lot he done. And I am hearing on your trip to New York, you might want to look for this on the 767 aircraft. They have espresso machines. Really? Now, where they're making fresh ground espresso beverages. So I'm hoping to get a better coffee product on board

than maybe I ever have before. Ask for an iced Americano. See what happens. I will. I will fuck around and find out. I would say Adam that the coffee that you ordered may be the best thing we had at cheesecake factory today. That's a pretty bold statement, but to know for sure, Ben, we're going to need to construct a rating system to rate all of the dishes that we got. What do you think it's gonna be this time? I mean there's a lot of options but the thing that kind of leaps out to me is weird strip of green onion. Yeah. That was like the most remarkable single discreet object.

Onion ribbons that we encountered. How about a five onion ribbon rating system where five is best possible execution and one is worst possible execution? First dish up, dynamite shrimp. Dynamite shrimp. I think to me all you want in an appetizer is a salty bite that gets the juices going.

You don't want too much either. Like sometimes an over-generosity to an appetizer can really have a negative impact on the rest of the meal. Absolutely. And when these dynamite shrimp hit the table, I was like, oh man, I'm gonna have like three of these and I'm gonna want more. Turns out I had just enough of the dynamite shrimp hit the table, I was like, oh man, I'm gonna have like three of these and I'm gonna want more Right turns out I had just enough of the dynamite shrimp. I thought they were tasty and crunchy

The sauce if you are someone who likes spice is gonna disappoint you Dynamite is a bit of an overstatement of how spicy these are gonna be We don't have a large sample size here It is consistent with the spiciness that you get in most other things that we've gotten at cheesecake factory. And that sense, it wasn't a particular disappointment. I'm going to, I don't know how I would improve it other than spice. Right.

And because it's doing exactly what it sets out to do, how could it not be a five onion ribbon dish? I thought it was great. I would get it again if only I could. Yeah. Unfortunately, we are punching holes in every piece of the menu that we try out here on factory seconds, so we'll never be able to get it again unless we do it for fun in a non-monetized way. It's like, why would we?

Unless we get it like entracized instead of appetized or sized as I count. Oh, yeah. I don't know how much more of these I would want to eat though, for reasons already stated. I think that that's a great point is that there's like a richness to them and they're a satisfying start to amyel without spoiling your appetite for the extra big main that is coming because you're at cheese and cracker. It's a rare example of restraint in portion size. Yeah. Yeah, I think I'm gonna join you at five curly onion pieces.

That was really good. Great dish. It was better than I expected it to be. But was the orange chicken better than you expected it to be? For me, I was expecting not good. And obviously, I need to recalibrate my preconceived notions that I carry in with me into the entrance of the restaurant that I eventually find after showing up late.

This is a popular and successful chain for a reason. It is. It is and I just need to get over myself. All right. When the orange chicken hit the table, I was delighted by the generous portion. I was happy with the batter and crunch and sauce level. It seems like it was composed in a very good way. It was much, much better than a fried piece of chicken breast should ever be. I think whether or not you

like this dish is going to have everything to do with the kind of spice you like in your spicy sauce. And this is gonna disappoint you if you like spicy like everything is at Cheesecake Factory. But because it was not grandma's marmalade as fried chicken sauce, I thought it was just as it was pretty good. Neither great nor bad for me. I think is probably going to fall in the three and a half to four onion ribbon place. I'm not going to miss not having this dish on future visits. I'm glad I got it this time because it scratched an itch I've had for a long time. Like I don't often get this and it's reliably pretty good when I do.

Yeah, yeah. There was a spot near my old place in Williamsburg, Brooklyn that had a lunch special of General So's chicken that I would get like once a week and I would just be like this is so bad for me. It is such a comfort food dish. Like I think that sweetness is why. But my first year in college there was a place on University Avenue in Seattle called the Wonder Walk. Their general so's was so good. And their portions were so generous to a struggling college student. Like the white clam shell to go box that you get everywhere

would be stuffed to the point of bulging with how much they give you and it's a meal that would last me several days. It's a meal that I would order so often they would know me at the door and like get it going. It's one of the few times I'd ever had that reputation at a restaurant that I loved and I really, I really missed that about the Wonder Walk. Oh, man. RSVP Wonder Walk. Sorry, cheesecake factory. Your fried and sauce Asian-inspired chicken food, not quite up to wonder walk standards, but still pretty good. Pretty good.

Pretty good. Pretty good. Pretty good. Pretty good. Yeah, I think three strips of curly onion is probably where I'm going to come in on this. I think that all of the things you've stated are true for me as well. I think that the plating maybe was a little ugly to me. Like it's just one half of the plate is the veg laid down with the chicken piled over the top of it.

And the other half of the plate is just the like molded to a plastic to go container lump of rice. I think part of it too was the dork going to prom with the high school cheerleader quality of what was on the table because that Chinese chicken salad that you got from the last episode was sitting right next to it. And the colors on that dish are just vibrant and poppy. And then you've got it right next to it. Right. And the colors on that dish are just vibrant and poppy. Yeah. And then you've got it right next to brown. Just a brown plate. Right. Yeah. While I was impressed that it didn't go so hard into the sweet that it was just inevitably candy like, I think I'm looking for a little bit more spice and a little more

interest. And I agree not a thing that I'm gonna miss now that it is off the table for us for the rest of our lives. Same, yeah. It's not the first thing I would recommend from the cheesecake factory. But it was a challenge, capable answered by them.

Yeah. All right, this coffee, we gotta review it. This coffee was one of the better coffees I'd had in recent memory. It, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it really good coffee places. You could tell me that that the server was back there cracking two skinny cans of Le Colombe and and pouring it over ice. And that's what I was having instead. That's how great it was. It was the star of the entire meal for me. We have cold brew on our rider for backstage and our live shows. And I'm hoping we get do some factories at the live shows in the future. That would be great. One thing about cheesecake factories is it's all over the country.

We might want to start thinking about putting cheesecake factory cold brew on the rider for this next tour we're planning. I've often thought of our live greatest gen shows as really like an NBA basketball team, you know, doing their season. Yeah. That's us. Yeah. Maybe cheesecake factory is a place to rely on for our food

and beverage needs. I am going to be thinking about this cold brew coffee for a long time. It is the maximum amount of curly cue green onion for me. It is five out of five easily. And really, of all of the things we've gotten at Cheesecake Factory so far, it's near the top, if not the top item. Yeah, it's the thing to beat.

I agree, 5 curly cue onions from me as well. We meant to get Cheesecake. Computer, one slice of New York Cheesecake. For this episode we did not have room. Computer, belay that order. We didn't do it at the end of the last episode either. Yeah. Maybe that's something we get into in a future episode.

Yeah. We'll have to see. It's a tough call because the portions are so big. By the time it's dessert time, you might not be able to. Right. But that is this episode of Factory Seconds, the podcast where two guys that just can't get enough cheesecake factory work our way through the menu item by item. We're going to do

it until we hate it. Both the show and the restaurant. Thank you so much for supporting the greatest generation and or the greatest discovery and or something else on max fun HQ and thank you for listening to this bonus episode. We really appreciate it. Uh, audience supported.