Back in the day, when I was a Caffrey’s man and the whole gang* would order Caffrey’s on the reg, often times at one in the morning, a combination of drunk and high**, watching True Blood, Georgie would order the grilled cheese, her rationale being that it was worth the seven dollars because it had three cheeses and had a slice of tomato in it.
I would insist it was just a grilled cheese but Georgie’s counter argument was that it was just so yummy.
OK, so I have to shrug this shit off and get my Italian Philly, which was a Caffrey’s bland-as-fuck cheesesteak with marinara and pepperoni on it.
Time went on and Caffrey’s prices kept going up. At least twice in one year, the prices went up fifty cents at a time and the portions started looking smaller and then I started hearing rumors from my cats in the food industry like Lee and Kendra’s Old Man Whose Name I Never Caught and randos at the Forest and, well, for reasons I can’t put in here because I don’t want a libel suit, I had to stop giving my money to Caffrey’s.
And then Caffrey’s closed.
And then they reopened and one of the food writers at City Pages lost her fucking nut over the reopening of Caffrey’s because it was the only place open until three in the morning. Nothing about the consistently shrinking overpriced portions (which, game recognize game, that’s thee strategy: stay open past bar close and charge ten dollars for a sandwich and charge two dollars for a thimble of potato salad and a dollar fifty for a twelve ounce Coke), nothing about the employees who were constantly unpaid (for rumored reasons I can’t divulge), nothing about whether it tasted good; it was just that they were open late.
Anyway, away from that world, we all moved on. Like really seriously. I moved two blocks away, Georgie moved to Seattle. I reckon I’ve ordered Caffrey’s as many times as she has since then. Sorry, I just found better sandwiches like literally everywhere else. Better clubs, better Italians, better cheesesteaks, better Reubens… I’m looking over the menu right now and I’m not seeing anything that - I mean, I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be insulting but I’m really not seeing anything that they do superior to anybody else.
And even on their original sandwiches, Kafe Nasty will vouch for this because we had the Three Pepper Chicken while we were good and fucked up and, holy shit, it was the best thing ever but, man, I had that sandwich sober and it was bland as fuck.
Trust me on this, Georgie and Kafe Nasty saw the menu that I kept on me, marked in red ink, I made it a point to have every Caffrey sandwich and I took notes on them. This is not a tall tale, this is not an exaggeration, this is a confession.
And I worked through that menu until there was only one sandwich left: The Grilled Cheese. (Still seven dollars, by the way.)
As a completist, I had no choice, and for lunch one day, in dignified solitude, I spent seven dollars on a grilled cheese sandwich. I can’t really remark on it because it was five years ago but I remember that slice of tomato was nice. Didn’t justify the seven dollars but it was nice.
Fast forward to today, when I took a half day and then I had nothing to do and I was going to stop at Mickey D’s for a pair of cheeseburgers but then I looked over at the Wedgetable and I thought that that turkey apple bagel wasn’t bad. Let’s see what else they got.
Go inside and check the menu board. I’m cautious about my options because everything appetizing has cheese and I’m lactose intolerant. I can still have cheese, just not cream cheese, sour cream, ice cream, whipping cream, milk, half & half, smoothies, milkshakes…
Nope.
But cheese? I should be fine.
I go up to the counter and I ask homie if he recommends the tuna melt or the pesto grilled cheese. He was briefly stymied and he said the grilled cheese. I told him let’s do that, he said it’d be ready in about five minutes, I grabbed a black cherry Hi-Ball and took my ticket to the register and I, for the first time in five years, purchased a seven dollar grilled cheese - smoked gouda and cheddar with tomato, carmelized onions, and pesto on whole grain bread.
So, you rode with me this long. You’ve had to sit through eleven paragraphs about a completely unrelated eatery. I bet you’re wondering how this thing was.
Well, let’s get the hot take out of the way: No matter what you do, no matter who you are, you melt multiple cheeses together, it just tastes like dairy. That’s all. Cheese is a wonderful and complex thing. It is an art. Its manufacture is a method of perfecting rot and mold. Don’t believe me? Check out bree. Bleu cheese for god’s sake. All cheese is basically milk so curdled it turned into a solid. And ancient people figured out that if you steered the fermentation process in one direction, you got pecorino, steer it another way and you get Swiss, yet another way gets you oaxaca… They each have distinct flavors that are meant to stand out and perform on their own. But put them together, melt them together, and you lose those individual notes. So this smoked gouda and cheddar the Wedgetable melts together? Just tasted like dairy. But I get it: You gotta justify seven dollars, you put two cheeses on this thing.
The carmelized onions? I couldn’t see them or taste them.
The pesto spread? It was OK. I mean, everything was overpowered by the cheese so the complexity of the pesto was lost. I could tell it was there.
The tomato? It was nice. I guess that’s the hot tip for you, kids: Put a slice of tomato on your grilled cheese sandwich. It’s nice. If you walk away with nothing else from this, keep close to your heart that a slice of tomato on a grilled cheese is nice.
Oh and the whole grain bread was fine.
I mean, I just can’t get excited about grilled cheese. It’s something I don’t even make at home unless you count quesadillas and I haven’t made quesadillas since I swore off flour tortillas because the calorie count on one of those is a day’s recommended caloric intake.
Well, actually, I stopped making those when I stopped getting shitfaced and passing out by four in the afternoon and waking up at eight at night hungry… and then trying to drink my sad, plateau’d ass back to bed so I could get some sleep before work in the morning. You know, when I was thirty four.
So the sandwich was fine. I guess it’s OK. I mean, it’s fucking grilled cheese. It has a tomato slice in it. That’s nice.
Just make this one at home.
* Usually just me and Georgie and Kafe Nasty but there was also Laura, Agee, I don’t think Little John was in on it, maybe Carson, no, wait, Little John did get in on it, Janis was more of a “bottle of wine before nine” gal so she was in the crew but not part of the all-night raging.
Really, I’m just trying to say I had a crew at one point.
** Agee gave Kafe Nasty his first gravity bong and Kafe totally ralphed.
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