Catering To the Melting Pot

Is America ready for the melted anchovy? That's the question on the table this afternoon in the gleaming research and development kitchen of the Cheesecake Factory in Calabasas Hills, Calif. Karl Matz, 31, a former chef at Spago with the earnest good looks of an Eagle Scout, has reluctantly removed the salty little fish from his pasta puttanesca, traditionally made with tomatoes, anchovies, olives, capers and dried red chilis, and sets plates of rigatoni cloaked in the sauce onto a black-marble counter. David Overton, Cheesecake's founder, CEO and ultimate tasting authority, picks up one of the half a dozen forks arrayed for this tasting session and takes a bite. He is wondering about the anchovies. "Karl wanted to put them in," he says. "But some people are allergic to fish." And Overton doesn't want to scare off the anchovy averse who don't realize the fish melt into the tomatoes as they cook, leaving behind a pungent bite that this sauce is missing. "You think it needs more capers?" he asks. Perhaps their tangy saltiness will compensate.

With that, a dish that traces its roots to the prostitutes of Naples (legend says they made the spicy dish for their clients) moves one step closer to the malls of America. Every six months, the restaurant's R&D chefs winnow hundreds of ideas for new menu items--the Cheesecake Factory's version of American Idol--and Matz's puttanesca has reached the finals. After a few years of rounds that added Asian, Caribbean and Latin American flavors to the menu, this round of revisions will reimagine familiar classics like spinach salad, corned-beef hash and spaghetti with red sauce; the puttanesca is a twist on marinara. The winners will debut on Cheesecake Factory menus later this month.

The evolving menus do more than just keep customers coming back. (With more than $1 billion in sales from 105 restaurants in 2005, the Cheesecake Factory is by far the most productive "casual-dining" chain in the country, generating $970 for every square foot of restaurant space.) Like an annual family portrait, every new Cheesecake Factory menu holds up a mirror to the American palate, revealing how it has grown and changed. When Vietnamese summer rolls appear alongside buffalo wings, "it shows the customers that those items are mainstream," says Karen Cathey, incoming chair of the American Institute of Wine and Food. "They've modernized American food," says Clark Wolf, a food and restaurant consultant, and the chain's national reach gives every new dish leverage over millions of American taste buds. With its kitchen-sink menu and gargantuan portions, the Cheesecake Factory is big-tent cuisine at its most expansive. It is a restaurant where everything is included but nothing is authentic, and it is changing the way we think about American food.