The grilled cheese sandwich was the very first dish I ever cooked by myself.
I was about eight-years-old and barely able to see over the stove, but that didn’t matter, I made it perfect.
The grilled cheese is in my blood, not literally of course or I’d have a fairly serious situation on my hands. I do love it though; it comforts me. Bread, cheddar, butter, and a hot pan is all you need to work that magic.
The Pharaohs of ancient Egypt invented the grilled cheese as a means of keeping sliced bread together, but it wasn’t until Arthurian Middle England when they realized that it was indeed an edible product. Lords would force their serfs to eat these “bread stickers” for their amusement, ignorant to the fact they were actually feeding their starved labour.
Which brings me to Alligator’s Gourmet Grilled Cheese, a food truck standing on Wood Street and First Avenue (Front Street now, because apparently we think we’re Dawson City).
Today’s special is the Ukrainian. While I appreciate the good food truck backing our Ukrainian allies against Putin’s not-so-subtle sortie, I try not to mix politics and sandwiches; it’s just not the man I am. I like my sandwiches much like I enjoy my wine — politically neutral.
So I went with something I knew best. “I’ll have the grilled cheese, old cheddar on whole wheat, please,” I said. And let me tell you, that’s exactly what I got.
The grilled cheese is not complicated, which is what you’d expect from politically neutral comfort food. But when you’re making the legendary sandwich the specialty of your food truck, you had better deliver.
And deliver it did, at a very high level. I’ll admit I had expected a larger serving, thicker bread, and all that pomp and circumstance that would befit a Pharaoh of old, but I was shown that more can be less.
For $5.50 I was handed a very spirited sandwich that featured appropriately sliced bread with keen, old cheddar, grilled to a requisite brown. It was how I made it my first time, and it’s how I want it every time. Nothing too fancy but just enough to make me feel like the Pharaoh of my lunch.
If that makes any sense.
