You'll Skip Your Favorite Italian Restaurant For This Popular Cheesecake Factory Ordering Trick

Americans love eating Italian food, but sometimes the best dishes are found in the most unexpected place. To wit: One's always spoiled for choices when you dine at the Cheesecake Factory — after all, the menu features over 250 items, including all kinds of Italian dishes. But one particular menu hack will have you coming back for more, and eschewing Italian eateries to try this chicken meal. You'll even forget about the chain's best-selling dish, the fettuccini Alfredo, in favor of this one.

It's a variation on the Crispy Chicken Costoletta, which starts its life on the menu as a crispy, well-seasoned chicken breast with a twist of lemon zest that's deep-fried and served with a side of citrus-flavored cream sauce, mashed potatoes, and asparagus. The hack is easy enough to perform; when ordering the meal, ask for extra lemon sauce on the side and replace the asparagus with angel hair pasta. You then simply pour the extra sauce over the chicken and pasta and eat up. The trick has had TikTok posters drooling for months, even while some commenters criticize the amount of carbs the dish packs on. One of the most frequently repeated comments in the many TikToks about the meal is that eating mashed potatoes and pasta together in a single dish feels a bit too much, and one ought to pick the pasta or the mashed.

Aside from that caveat, Cheesecake Factory fans love the Chicken Costoletta with this additional hack thrown in. "This has been my EXACT order for 20+ years. Glad I'm not the only one," a TikTok user remarked. While most of the responders aren't veterans to the dish, they admit that they tried it because it went viral on TikTok and were very happy with the results. 

The dish has plenty of fans even if they choose to make adjustments of their own to the meal. Another TikTok user said they do the same trick, but use Alfredo sauce. "Why is this trending now??? Been my fav thing on the menu for YEARSSS except keep the asparagus have them add shredded cheese on top melted," someone else said. "Ask for the Madeira sauce on the side. Trust me," another replied. You know it's a good dish when it inspires users to hack the hack, proving that this simple variation might be one of the best pasta dishes the Cheesecake Factory has to offer.