Of cheesecakes and car-kabobs
by Arthur
Posted on Wednesday, January 4th, 2006 at 1:02 am CET
Today we had a drive around the Chicagoland area and had two interesting stops: we saw the spindle of cars in Berwyn, and toured the Eli’s Cheesecake World factory.
Made famous in the 1992 film Wayne’s World is this 40 foot spindle of eight cars at Cermak Plaza Mall in Berwyn, Illinois.
The Spindle is an 1989 work of art by Dustin Shuler, who has more auto works in the de Saisset Museum in Santa Clara, California. There are 20 other sculptures located around the mall.
The state of Illinois has an Off-beat Illinois campaign right now that features a poster for the Car-kabob in Berwyn (see image on right).
We also stopped at Eli’s Cheesecake World for the 1pm Sneak Peek Tour of the famous Eli’s Cheesecake factory. We had a 45-minute tour that started with a slideshow of the history of Eli’s. Then we had to put on hair-nets (they took a picture of the group for their blog) and we were guided through the factory and saw: (1) the research and development area, where they experiment with new cheesecake flavors, (2) the huge tunnel oven where hundreds of cheesecakes were slowly moving on a conveyer belt, (3) the two-story high cooling tower that can cool thousands of cheesecakes at a time, and (4) the decorating area.
The factory runs 24/7 (the crusts are made in the night and the cakes during the day) and can produce 25,000 cheesecakes per day during their high season between Thanksgiving and Christmas. This is the only Eli’s factory in the world, so all their cakes are made here. It was a fun tour.
We were not allowed to take pictures inside the factory, but you can find some photos in the virtual tour of the official website.
Note: On Google Local you can see the shadow of the spindle on the parking lot of the mall.
Today we had a drive around the Chicagoland area and had two interesting stops: we saw the spindle of cars in Berwyn, and toured the Eli’s Cheesecake World factory.
Made famous in the 1992 film Wayne’s World is this 40 foot spindle of eight cars at Cermak Plaza Mall in Berwyn, Illinois.
The Spindle is an 1989 work of art by Dustin Shuler, who has more auto works in the de Saisset Museum in Santa Clara, California. There are 20 other sculptures located around the mall.
The state of Illinois has an Off-beat Illinois campaign right now that features a poster for the Car-kabob in Berwyn (see image on right).
We also stopped at Eli’s Cheesecake World for the 1pm Sneak Peek Tour of the famous Eli’s Cheesecake factory. We had a 45-minute tour that started with a slideshow of the history of Eli’s. Then we had to put on hair-nets (they took a picture of the group for their blog) and we were guided through the factory and saw: (1) the research and development area, where they experiment with new cheesecake flavors, (2) the huge tunnel oven where hundreds of cheesecakes were slowly moving on a conveyer belt, (3) the two-story high cooling tower that can cool thousands of cheesecakes at a time, and (4) the decorating area.
The factory runs 24/7 (the crusts are made in the night and the cakes during the day) and can produce 25,000 cheesecakes per day during their high season between Thanksgiving and Christmas. This is the only Eli’s factory in the world, so all their cakes are made here. It was a fun tour.
We were not allowed to take pictures inside the factory, but you can find some photos in the virtual tour of the official website.
Note: On Google Local you can see the shadow of the spindle on the parking lot of the mall.
Dear Arthur:
Thanks for visiting us today!
Marc Schulman
Eli’s President
[...] Made famous in the 1992 film Wayne’s World is this 40 foot spindle of eight cars at Cermak Plaza Mall in Berwyn, Illinois. The Spindle is an 1989 work of art by Dustin Shuler, who has more auto works in the de Saisset Museum in Santa Clara, California. There are 20 other sculptures located around the mall. We visited this place last week; check out these photos. [...]
[...] The article was called “bookclub.facetoface” and was written by Rick Kogan, resident gravel-voiced Luddite and throwback to the old days of newspaper reporting. His story highlights a website called Gapers Block which is a great resource for local news, restaurants, entertainment and anything Chicago. It is there that I learned that “The Spindle” in Berwyn is in danger of being removed to make way for, what else, a Walgreen’s, a spreading cancer on our landscape. But I digress. [...]
If you or any of your readers are interested in the restoration and preservation of the Spindle, please visit us at http://www.savethespindle.com.
Thanks!
Hello webmaster…I Googled for history of cheesecake, but found your page about Of cheesecakes and car-kabobs…and have to say thanks. nice read.
When I was in Chicago last (Memorial Day Weekend 2008), I went to Eli’s because my colleague grew up within 10 minutes of it. We didn’t take the tour unfortunately, but we did purchase a plethora of products for him to take to his parent’s house. I did see the outline of the spindle though: in the parking lot: Just wished there were more to see since I thought that was an artistic thing of interest that would bring in more customers to the factory. The whole place smells so good you feel like you can get a chisel, take a small piece of the wall, and consume that thinking it was cheesecake! Needless to say, it was fun taking a side-trip over there: I hope the next time I’m in town I can go through the whole tour. Take care.