If I were handed a billing statement of everything I ordered at the Cage this semester, I could tell you without even glancing at it that half of my Flex Dollars — if not more — were spent on grilled cheese.
For as long as I can remember, grilled cheese has been my favorite food and a source of comfort and nostalgia. In one of my favorite childhood memories, I’m sitting at a booth in my hometown diner alternating bites of crispy grilled cheese with turns of tic-tac-toe in blue crayon, crumbs and grease stains dotting the back of the kids menu. Grilled cheese was my go-to lunch in the elementary school cafeteria, and once I discovered tomato soup as a dipping sauce, it was game over.
The truth is, grilled cheese is nothing fancy, and that’s exactly why I love it so much. Yeah, you can find delicious gourmet grilled cheeses out there with toppings like Gouda cheese, honey, and red pepper jam, but my personal favorite lineup is white bread with American cheese. Butter both sides of the bread, pop it in the frying pan, and flip it right when the bread turns orangey-golden. I can practically hear the sizzle.
Making grilled cheese in the Caf is tough. Unless you’re making a sandwich loaded with toppings, it’s hard to get crispy bread using the panini press. While I can’t explain why this is, I think it has something to do with the bread-to-cheese ratio. And the fact that you’re not supposed to use butter or spreads on the panini press.
Thanks to the Cage, though, any night can be a grilled cheese night. It makes the perfect lunch, dinner, or snack on the way home from a study session in the library. Plus, despite the recent inflation of Cage prices, grilled cheese remains a pretty solid economic pick. For under five Flex Dollars, you get a sandwich, chips, and a pickle. That, as a friend pointed out the other day, is less than a breakfast sandwich costs.
