The Grilled Cheese Sandwich

The grilled cheese experience has come in many flavors in my life. And it's always paired with tomato soup. I don't have any deductive clue as to how this became the standard, but it inarguably works. We'll start with the absolute worst, but indulgent best of grilled cheese - the school cafeteria-white bread-american "cheese" type of sandwich. Paired with thinned out pseudo-tomato soup. And Oyster crackers. Blech - I cringe to think of it now, but in the days of my public school youth, that was the day to get hot lunch.

Then I found out that grilled cheese could actually be quality upon eating the antithesis of the school lunch variety. My Western Maryland hometown had a restaurant called Gandalf's where all the college-hippy and professor types went for delicious-healthy food. This grilled cheese had big, thick multi-grain bread and your choice of two cheeses melting inside, plus caramelized onions, pickles and tomatoes, if you wanted it delux. It was three inches thick. And the accompanying soup, African peanut stew, was a thick and nutty blend of tomatoes and peanut butter. $5 combo. Very unfortunately, Gandalf's caught fire, thus the end of the very high point of grilled cheeses for me.

Now Nathan has brought me to a restaurant in the city that's entirely dedicated to grilled cheese - Say Cheese. We went there last weekend after spending nearly an hour on the phone, hungry, and deciding where to eat for dinner. Don't ask me how we ended up with grilled cheese after deciding on French, but there we were at the edge of the Manhattan earth, the lone diners on Saturday night, in what is probably a hot Hell's Kitchen lunch spot. Kind of like a surreal episode of the last lunchers. It was no Gandalf's. But it was delicious. And they treated us better than the French restaurant would have. The sandwiches are pressed in a grill and oozing the filling. Mine had jack cheese, onions, and roasted red peppers. We shared the very good tomato-cheddar soup.

Long live the grilled cheese!

Say Cheese!
649 9th Ave (Between 45th and 46th Sts)
Hell's Kitchen, New York
212-265-8840