The lines were long at the "1st 6th Annual Grilled Cheese Invitational."
photo: Kevin Rolly
At a newish restaurant in Culver City called Meltdown Etc., the menu consists of a couple dozen variations on grilled cheese sandwiches. At Campanile, local trendies beg for a reservation for Grilled Cheese Night, aka Thursdays. We Angelenos may be obsessed with our cholesterol, and committed to decreasing our carbs, but we sure love our grilled cheese sandwiches – not wisely, but too well (as Othello said, just before stabbing himself.)
And perhaps nowhere was grilled cheese praised more highly than at the recent (and oddly named) “1st 6th Annual Grilled Cheese Invitational,” held on Saturday April 19th on a rolling lawn in LA’s Griffith Park. There were more than a hundred entrants in categories with funny names like “The Missionary Sammich” (standard white bread, Cheddar or American, and standard butter or margarine), “The Kama Sutra Sammich” (any kind of bread, any kind of butter and any kind of cheese plus additional ingredients) and “The Honey Pot Sammich” (must have a sweet flavor).
After all the judges had finished eating, and all the points had been tabulated, the overall winner was chef/owner Eric Greenspan of The Foundry on Melrose, who took top honors with his exotic, post-modernist grilled cheese sandwich made with tallegio cheese, short ribs and apricot-caper puree. If you want to get a taste of victory, Greenspan has added the dish to his restaurant's lounge menu for $12, as well as with a "plain" grilled cheese for $9.
– Merrill Shindler