8 Things You Should Never Order From Cheesecake Factory

A lot of the small plates and apps at Cheesecake Factory feature cheese as the main event: truffle-bacon grilled cheese sticks, anyone? But it's the sweet corn tamales, heaped in sour cream, that actually outweigh the fried mac-and-cheese balls when it comes to calories, at 1,400. 

As we've pointed out in the past, Cheesecake Factory's notorious pastas are some of the most fattening dishes you can buy at national restaurant chains. A routine offender is this Louisiana-style entree. The mushrooms and peppers might trick you into thinking your meal is healthy, but the breaded, fried, Parmesan-cheese crusted chicken and creamy sauce adds up to a whopping 2,210 calories. 

Not a huge shocker here! The most offensively unhealthy burger at the chain is the bacon-bacon option, which boasts two kinds of cheese (cheddar and American), in addition to its thick-cut bacon slices. It also contains almost double a day's worth of sodium — 3,352 mg. The recommended daily amount is 2,300mg. 

Hold onto your hearts ... and their functioning valves. This "Comfort Classic" dish, in which liquid fat (in the form of gravy) is poured over sautéed chicken breasts and buttermilk biscuits, has nearly 2,000 calories, and 5,448 mg of sodium. That's an entire day's worth of calories, and almost double your recommended daily sodium intake. 

"Asian"-style dishes at Cheesecake Factory tend to be breaded and then coated in super-sweet syrups and sauces. This particular item has more than a day's worth of calories, two days' worth of sodium, and 236g of carbs. 

Chicken is often framed as the healthiest choice on a menu, and a lemon-herb roasted chicken seems even better. It's not breaded or fried or covered in cream, so it's gotta be healthy, right? Wrong. Cheesecake Factory's roasted chicken is soaked in sodium, at a mind-numbing 6,881mg. That's more salt than a human should eat over the course of three days. 

Okay, no one ever mistook a milkshake for being healthy. But this particular shake packs around 50 percent more calories than nearly any slice of the many cheesecakes on display at the Factory, making them a better choice. 

One of the most surprisingly heavy dishes at Cheesecake Factory isn't a creamy pasta or a gravy-soaked meat or a dessert drizzled with chocolate and caramel. It's the refreshing-looking strawberry shortcake, with features little slices of fruit but a shocking 1,430 calories — more than their Americana cheeseburger.