Cheesecake News

Cheesecake Factory will build more cheesecake at new Dallas-area location

Mmm cheesecake.

Photo courtesy of Cheesecake Factory

It's cheesecake for the win at The Shops at Highland Village, the shopping center in Highland Village west of Lewisville Lake, where a new location of The Cheesecake Factory will open in late 2023.

The restaurant will go into a 9,700-square-foot space at 4100 Deer Creek, # 110 previously occupied by a Barnes & Noble, which closed in June and will re-open in a former Pier 1 in Flower Mound in late fall.

A release calls the Cheesecake Factory "the chain famous for its wide-ranging menu, generous portions, and desserts, "especially its signature cheesecakes."

Any right-thinking person might list cheesecakes first, but let's cut the Cheesecake Factory some slack. With a name like the Cheesecake Factory, they're in a struggle to not be typecast as just cheesecake.

The chain was founded in Beverly Hills in 1978 by David Overton, whose mother owned a bakery selling cheesecakes. It's easy to take for granted now, but if you lived in Los Angeles during that time, The Cheesecake Factory was kind of a marvel.

Now, there are more than 200 restaurants around the world, including three in the Dallas area: Allen, Frisco, and the original Dallas location which opened across the street from NorthPark Center in 1998. There are also three in Tarrant County: Fort Worth, Southlake, and Arlington, for a total of seven in DFW.

The restaurant has a diverse array of dishes, including American classics such as burgers, pasta, and seafood, as well as international flavors, salads and appetizers. Not just cheesecake.

Overton says that The Cheesecake Factory is pleased to be opening a location in The Shops at Highland Village.

"The Cheesecake Factory has enjoyed being part of the greater Dallas area since first opening there in 1998, and we look forward to being part of the Highland Village community," he says.

The center also has plans to renovate the Southern courtyard near the new location into a drive-thru parking lot.

“The Shops at Highland Village is thrilled to welcome The Cheesecake Factory as the newest addition to our center,” said Ravi Wadhwa, senior general manager at The Shops at Highland Village. “Having this national powerhouse brand join our portfolio is significant win that will purposefully complement our unique tenant mix. Like many of our guests, we are counting down the days until this fan favorite opens its doors to our community.”

desserts openings

Skewers News

Chinese restaurant Yang's Smokehouse in Plano has sensational skewers

Yang's Smokehouse

Crispy tofu balls at Yang's Smokehouse

A new family-owned Asian restaurant specializing in skewers has opened in Plano: Called Yang's Smokehouse, it's a Chinese place now open at the Mitsuya Marketplace center at 240 Legacy Dr #306, with a menu featuring dishes you won't find anywhere else in Dallas.

That includes skewers of all kinds: meats such as beef tongue, pork belly, lamb, sausage, mini pork ribs, pork skin, and duck gizzard; and veggie skewers including green beans, cabbage, eggplant, zucchini, and lotus slices.

These skewers have a history that dates back to the restaurant's roots in China, says Yang's founder Candice Cao.

"The legacy of Yang's Smokehouse began in 1980 with secret family recipes from my Grandma Yang, which were passed down through generations," Cao says.

After being widowed at the young age of 30, Grandma Yang launched a charcoal stall from which she served skewers, enhanced by her hand-crushed spice blends and cooked over live fire. She eventually built a small chain with six locations, each serving about 10,000 skewers per day, Candice says.

Candice's mother joined the business and now Candice, who came to Dallas more than a decade ago to attend Dallas Baptist University, represents the third generation.

"I'm proud to follow the family tradition of women owning their own business," Candice says.

While skewers are the star, Yang's also serves unique dishes that are native to the Guizhou province in southwestern China where Candice is from.

That includes spicy stir-fried clams in black bean sauce with garlic, ginger, scallion, and cilantro; and a dish called Spicy and Numbing Chicken Knee Cartilage featuring a delicacy taken from the small joint connecting the drumstick to the foot.

"Asians know about this dish — it has a really strong, spicy flavor that almost has a numbing effect," Candice says.

There are also crispy tofu balls, popular snacks in Guizhou featuring a crisp tofu skin wrapped around soft mashed tofu filling which is dressed up with radish and spices and fried.

"It's crispy on the outside and tender on the inside, and we serve it with a spicy dipping sauce that has radish and cilantro," Candice says. "We recommend poking a little hole and adding some of the radish to make it juicy. It's one of our most popular items, equally loved by vegetarians and diners seeking truly authentic Chinese food."

Other menu items include egg fried rice, Korean kim chi egg rice, stir-fries, potato pancakes, potstickers, cucumber salad, and "Southern" cold noodles — featuring sweet potato noodles in a simple but satisfying sauce made with soy sauce, vinegar, sesame oil, and chili, topped with cucumber, perfect for summer.

They recently added an all-you-can-eat skewers offering at lunch, Monday-Friday, for $40 that'll last through the summer.

To guarantee a smooth and successful launch in the U.S., Candice brought in a secret weapon: Grandma Yang herself.

"Grandma traveled here to help get Yang's off the ground," Candice says. "That's her coaching the team in the kitchen."

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