Brace yourself, America: Your favorite restaurant has more than 180 locations, more than 250 menu options and somewhere around 70 rotating varieties of cheesecake to try.
Yup, The Cheesecake Factory was named America's favorite casual dining restaurant in the annual Consumer Picks survey from Nation's Restaurant News. The online survey collected 4,805 responses from diners about their experiences with more than 173 brands nationwide, and reviewers gave the chain especially high marks for food quality (and by "quality," we're guessing they might mean that Oreo Dream Extreme Cheesecake).
Other top scorers on the casual dining index include standbys Olive Garden -- famous for its all-you-can-eat Pasta Pass giveaway -- and once-tumbling Red Lobster, which got a huge boost this year from Beyonce and rocketed up 10 spots from 14th to fourth place. (It helps to be millennials' favorite restaurant, even by accident.)
There were separate rankings for fine-dining restaurants and family-friendly spots, too. But in the casual dining category, Cheesecake took the cake. Here are the top 10 of America's favorite casual dining restaurants for 2016 (view the entire top 40 here):
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