Eli's Cheesecake World
6701 W Forest Preserve Drive (Harlem and Montrose), Chicago
(just down the block from the pyramid-shaped building at Wright College)
Specialty sandwiches ($6) in cafe from 11:00 - 2:00
What can we say about this little slice of heaven on Chicago's northwest side? It's not only the world headquarters and bakery for Eli's Cheesecake, they've also got a cafe and store. The boys and I showed up wearing our proverbial critic hats but later traded them in for hairnets to go on the factory tour. We arrived too late for the made-to-order artisan sandwiches like chicken salad with grapes and pecans, but grabbed a decent ready-made Caesar salad to tide us over until dessert. Dessert. Dessert.
I mean, you could come here for a cup of coffee and free wi-fi or to grab a gourmet grilled cheese, but you'd have to be a fool, or possibly a diabetic, to show up at Eli's and not eat dessert. Their cases are overflowing with delicious-looking desserts- and not just cheesecake. They've got eclairs, tarts...I asked my boys to write down the names of one or two of the most delicious-looking items, but they told me that was impossible to choose.
Here's what the world's most ticklish restaurant critics and their friends had to say about Eli's Cheesecake World. (Please note that all exclamation points appear at the request of the boys.)
Eli's is fun! Their cafe is good. They have desserts, sandwiches, and salads. They sell cheesecakes, little cakes, lemon meringue tarts and everything looks yummy.
Six-year-old Splinter says: Out of three thumbs down, I give it seven forks! (I've previously mentioned that we don't yet have a uniform rating system. What he means is that Eli's is more than twice the opposite of bad... in other words- great!)
The tours are cool and fun! And everything smells delicious. Really delicious. A tour guide shows you almost the whole place, but only staying on the path. Sometimes you go into a big freezer (we did this on a previous tour, but not today). The freezer room is for freezing the cheesecakes before they decorate them. The decorating room is cold, but not as cold as the freezer.
The room where they bake the cheesecakes is really hot--over 100 degrees F in the summer. The cheesecakes go on a cool conveyor belt. It is so cool to see them pour the batter and watch the cheesecakes go on the belt. It takes the cheesecake through the 70-foot-long tunnel oven and then up a big corkscrew cooling tower with about 19 curves. Then people take them off pans and put them on racks. Then they go to the freezer room and then the decorating room.
In the decorating room, we saw them making Chocolate-Covered Lava Cake for Wal Mart.
This is a cool tour! But if your brothers or sisters are under five years old, they have to stay home with a sitter.
They make over 100 kinds of cheesecake if you can believe it!
This tour is definitely recommended for kids!
