Cheesecake Factory

We got a gift certificate to the Cheesecake Factory so we headed over to the Natick Mall (I refuse to call it the Collection).  Normally we avoid the mall because it always seems to be so crazy but we went at 6pm on a Tuesday night and got sat immediately.
Cheesecake Factory always reminds me a little bit of a real factory because of the acoustics.  It seems like there could only be a few tables in there and it would still be noisy.  We got a booth which helped the noise a little bit.
Since we had a decent sized gift card, we got an appetizer of mini crab cakes or crab fritters, whatever they called them:

There were nice and crunch on the outside and really delicate on the inside.  The only thing that might have been better about these would be if they used less mayo but they were still very tasty.

Ethan got a combination plate of Shrimp Scampi and Steak Diane:

This plate didn’t photograph well but Ethan liked it.  The Scampi was a little different with a cream-based sauce separated from the steak by a divider of mashed potatoes (this also came with a side of steamed broccoli).
I got grilled salmon with mashed potatoes and broccoli:

I thought the salmon was great and the mashed potatoes were really good.  I only picked at them because I could imagine how much butter and cream were in them. 
We were stuffed and decided to get a dessert to go, which was a slice of Red Velvet cheesecake. 

This ended up being dessert for two nights!  Normally I go for straight cheesecake but Ethan thought we might give this a try and everything about it was delicious.  The cake was moist but not too dense (much different than CPK’s version) and the cheesecake was just rich enough to work with the Red Velvet part.  Ethan even found the whipped cream to be especially good.  This is a decent enough place for dinner but I feel like they really shine with their desserts (which makes sense).   We probably won’t find ourselves here often as we never go to the mall but it’s a good place to go to if you’re at the mall for the day and want to get a treat.