Lemon Meringue
If you think we’re hot, you should have been sitting directly in the sun on this rooftop! My goodness!
My Cheesecake Year is on the road! Hello from sunny San Francisco!!
What if every sentence ended in an exclamation point! Every sentence ever! What if exclamation points were periods!
But seriously. I’ve been in the City by the Bay aka San Fran aka The Bay Area aka Frisco aka SF for one week. And it’s the first week of Pride month. Karen and I are being extra gay right now. Her brother and sister-in-law live in Outer Sunset and we are here to spend time with them and watch their precious baby while they’re out of town. We’re playing house. We’re pretending to be two mommies. We’ve got a stroller and two dogs. We’re binging the Queer Ultimatum. It’s glorious. Happy Pride everyone.
I’m also obsessed with the new Tiles game on the NYT crossword app, specifically the New Haven tiles. IYKYK. My Longest Combo is 490.
A week before we left, I reached out to the one person I know in SF, my cousin Hannah. Karen told me the TCF in the city is on top of a Macy’s so I got excited and thought Hannah would want to join me. And she said yes! So I made a reservation for us on June 2nd. THEN, as if life couldn’t get any better, I get this email from TCF. They’re telling me about a new rewards program that begins on JUNE FIRST called Cheesecake Rewards. I’m thinking wait a second, I’m going to TCF with Hannah on June 2nd…could this really be true? I’m going to get a complimentary slice of cheesecake for using my new Cheesecake Rewards for the very first time, a day after it premieres? Things just work out well for me I guess! I’m in flow.
I leave for Union Square an hour early because I know cities and I know they’re notoriously hard to park in. I found a garage that smelled like so much piss, lucky me. I entered in through the Macy’s and found the escalator. The sign said TCF was on the 7th floor. Now the thing is I knew Hannah was about 5 minutes behind me and she recently fractured her foot while dancing (cool reason) so she was on crutches. And here I am on this escalator and some of the floors are broken and I’m thinking, there’s no way this girl is gonna make it up 7 flights on that broke ass foot. So I texted her and told her to take the elevator. Now, is this important to the story? I don’t know but I told it. So yeah, maybe it is important! It depends on what meaning you make of it.
It’s so great to see Hannah because it’s been months and we are besties and used to seeing each other very often, especially during the pandemi. We have been THROUGH IT together. We were together when we found out my dad died. She took care of me that Christmas. I visited her in Mexico, she’s been to LA many times, we’ve gone camping. We can talk and talk and talk for hours. She’s probably my favorite person to talk to actually. She’s getting a damn Ph.D in ecotherapy and psychedelic assisted therapy so yeah, she’s quite cool. She has great style. She’s very good at flavors. She can come up with good combos. She always has at least 3 drinks going at any given time. She rarely finishes a drink because she likes to take her time. That’s how she moves and I really appreciate it about her. She’s engaged with the world! We love to go to Maru for spiced cold brew and Bulan for vegan chicken wings with vegan Ranch. She was with me when I had to pull a piece of paper out of Scoop’s butt. She took me to see Alanis Morrissette and we took a little bit of acid beforehand. She taught me how to plus up my camping experience. I got the same mattress she uses, the same colorful twinkle lights. We’re going to get tattoos together, we just don’t know what yet. Also she taught me the word ‘scrumples’. It’s a word for the kind of affection you usually get from an intimate partner like head scratches and back rubs and stuff. We love scrumples.
Back to the Factory. We’re sitting outside, I am directly facing the sun. I ended up coming home with a little red face and chest. I’m okay now. I was wearing sunscreen. Always wear sunscreen.
We actually ordered food first because it was lunchtime and Hannah had not been to a TCF in many years. We got stupid drinks and shared a salad and of course had the brown bread. And then Hannah went through the process of selecting a flavor.
Lemon Meringue was the first one she named out loud. I said nothing. She named a few other options and then hobbled over on her boot and her crutches to look at all the slices for herself. Then she asked our server her opinion and she said that Lemon Meringue was HER favorite slice! She said it was the only slice she could eat in one sitting because it wasn’t too sweet. That sold us. Hannah also ordered a side of fresh strawberries. I told our server that I had Cheesecake Rewards and she didn’t know what I was talking about because she didn’t work on June 1st so she hadn’t heard about them yet.
I knew about the Cheesecake Rewards before our server did.
I educated a server at TCF about the Cheesecake Rewards program.
WAIT. Before we move on to da slice, I have to show you where in the Macy’s this TCF was because it was so weird.
It’s here! Right in the middle of this bedding section.
Okay and now for da slice.
She’s a beaut, ain’t she?
My goddess. This is a perfect slice of cheesecake. So so so creamy with a layer of lemon jamminess on top and then the meringue on top of that which is FRESH. If you look at it in the display case, no meringue. They add that when you order it. Yo. It was perfect for a hot summer day. The server was right. It was the right balance of sweet and tart, so refreshing, like drinking a glass of creamy cheesy lemonade. I also got a bite of the back end where there was more graham cracker crust and gotdamn. I need to make sure to always get a bite of the back end off all my slices. And yes I’m talking about the cheesecake heh heh heh.
Hannah asked me during our meal about the rankings so far and where this slice was going to fall. I said it would definitely be top 3 and now a day later, as I write this, I realize that this baby has to be the new number one. It’s just too good.
Lemon Meringue: 5 out of 5
Lemon Meringue
Mango Key Lime
Pineapple Upside Down Cake
White Chocolate Raspberry Truffle
The Original
Cinnabon Cinnamon Swirl
Very Cherry Ghirardelli Chocolate
Tiramisu
Celebration
Salted Caramel
I have two more exciting things to talk about.
One: I made merch! I’ve been designing it all month and it makes me very happy. You can visit my Zazzle store here.
One of the stickers you can buy is a meme my sister Lenox made for me that looks like this
The other thing is this t-shirt I designed. It’s on a different website and I don’t get anything if you order it, I just like the design and want to share it.
And the final thing is that instead of texting everyone when I write a new post, I am hoping that if you are interested, you will sign up to receive notifications when I write something new.
Okay, that’s everything for today! I know it’s been a lot! Thanks for hanging in there!