Move Fast and Break Gruyère

May 31, 2017 10:31 PM

The Silicon Valley startup that wanted to disrupt grilled cheese sandwiches.
posted by Chrysostom (73 comments total)

No one likes feeling ripped off, and doing a worse job of the thing every kid in America learns to make by age 12 is a good way to do that.
posted by Space Coyote at 10:46 PM on May 31, 2017 [7 favorites]

I thought I recognized that $590 million camera story.
posted by the man of twists and turns at 10:47 PM on May 31, 2017 [1 favorite]

On the one hand, I'm very interested in the idea of a device that can create a grilled cheese sandwich in 45 seconds.

On the other hand, I know that I would be dead within 6 months if I ever had access to one.
posted by figurant at 10:48 PM on May 31, 2017 [31 favorites]

The Melt deserves a place in the Dumb Money Hall of Shame next to the Segway and Theravance's blood testing machine.
posted by benzenedream at 10:49 PM on May 31, 2017

I haven't seen this website before, can someone verify - this is not some Onion-type satire, right? I mean it includes stuff like this:

Kaplan himself noted that his lack of experience with video recorders had proved an asset when creating the Flip cam; logically, the sentiment applied to his new business. “I didn’t know anything about the video camera ten years ago,” he boasted in a 2011 interview with Forbes, “and I don’t know that much about grilled cheese sandwiches or soup.”

Also, on preview - I parked my car in a multi-level underground garage last night, and they had a guard zipping around on a Segway; it seemed pretty fit for purpose.
posted by Dr Dracator at 10:54 PM on May 31, 2017 [1 favorite]

The interesting technical angle is this:

With input from NASA consultants, the company engineered (and patented) a “Smart Box” that could keep French fries crispy and melted cheese gooey, even an hour after being made

That's still an annoying problem for a lot of restaurants, and solving it has a modernist-cuisine appeal that works for many foodie types, me included. BUT. Making food for others at scale, as any restaurant does, involves rigorous people management, and empathy. This chap seems to have forgotten he's selling an experience, not a device.

Also, one of my pet peeves is people including clichés in their reasoning process. "We're going to disrupt X" is a prime example. Such fuzzy, amorphous thinking can only lead to poor results.
posted by iffthen at 11:16 PM on May 31, 2017 [6 favorites]

I ate at The Melt in Cupertino once. It was fine. It's about as notable as any of the other dozens of new fast-casual restaurants out there, which is to say, not that notable. The notion that it's disrupting anything is farcical. But my wife can't eat dairy, so yeah, not so many visits lined up in my future.

If they got $10M-ish from Sequoia, meh, it seems like a reasonable if bland investment. It's a restaurant. There's just no way to get GOOG or CRM returns from a restaurant chain. Like, less than zero ways. But could it be as big as Five Guys? Sure, maybe. It's not as vastly overcapitalized as Juicero.
posted by GuyZero at 11:18 PM on May 31, 2017

Maybe I'll try it again someday, but their grilled cheese sandwiches five years ago were pretty pathetic and I've never been back since. You want to open a grilled cheese restaurant? Start with someone who spent the last year obsessing over grilled cheese, because once your initial set of customers figure out that you opened without making any effort to perfect your namesake dish, they're going to be gone for good.
posted by zachlipton at 11:24 PM on May 31, 2017 [7 favorites]

The interesting technical angle is this:

With input from NASA consultants, the company engineered (and patented) a “Smart Box” that could keep French fries crispy and melted cheese gooey, even an hour after being made

That's still an annoying problem for a lot of restaurants, and solving it has a modernist-cuisine appeal that works for many foodie types, me included. BUT. Making food for others at scale, as any restaurant does, involves rigorous people management, and empathy. This chap seems to have forgotten he's selling an experience, not a device.

Agreed with all of this.

But I also think the technical claims are probably all lies.

Would it be fantastic to keep fries crispy after an hour away from the heat? Yeah you bet, that's exciting. When a "tech company" claims they have done this, with the help of "NASA consultants"? That's hype, like Elizabeth Holmes's no-ouchy blood assay. All of this crap is vaporware.
posted by grobstein at 12:01 AM on June 1, 2017 [11 favorites]

Am I right that the whole story didn't mention menu prices even once?

How much am I paying for these cheeses?
posted by grobstein at 12:05 AM on June 1, 2017

Oh shit we have one right here. If it was open I would probably go now.

I am hungry.

Here is their menu. Prices are sort of hidden but a grilled cheese costs $6 or 7.
posted by grobstein at 12:07 AM on June 1, 2017

Grilled cheese restaurant called "The Melt"

OH

NO

YOU

DIDN'T
posted by J.K. Seazer at 12:16 AM on June 1, 2017 [13 favorites]

restaurants having a high likelihood of going out of business isn't exactly a new thing, TBH, even if they did invent a couple of fancy new ways of ensuring it happened.

(Also there are *multiple* grilled cheese food trucks here in Seattle, so I guess we would be real marks for Melt if it happened here.)
posted by Artw at 12:16 AM on June 1, 2017 [3 favorites]

"Restaurant quality" grilled cheese sandwiches? Please.

Bread, cheese and butter. Grill in pan. Done. There's nothing to disrupt.

Anyone who orders a grilled cheese sandwich in a restaurant for freaking $5 is a complete rube and fully deserves the fleecing.
posted by PareidoliaticBoy at 12:19 AM on June 1, 2017 [5 favorites]

There are a lot of places in San Francisco that make very good grilled cheese sandwiches, and The Melt is not any of them.
posted by aubilenon at 12:33 AM on June 1, 2017 [6 favorites]

Huh, Google says the one in Berkeley is still there - I'd assumed it wouldn't last much longer than the place that served cereal. Never ate there. Wasn't aware a restaurant chain counted as an SV startup, even if it is run out of NorCal.
posted by atoxyl at 1:45 AM on June 1, 2017

Anyone who orders a grilled cheese sandwich in a restaurant for freaking $5 is a complete rube and fully deserves the fleecing.

Ah, well, it's too late for me now -- I'll just resign myself to my unfortunate life as a rube (payer of five dollars for a sandwich) and take my well-deserved fleecing (tasty sandwich).
posted by value of information at 2:02 AM on June 1, 2017 [16 favorites]

When the Melt opened I was very interested in what it had to offer. Unfortunately,what it had to offer was undersized, overpriced, and way too precious—your side of potato chips came in a clear cellophane bag sealed with a round "The Melt" sticker. It was obvious that your money was paying for the presentation rather than the food.
posted by ejs at 2:23 AM on June 1, 2017 [1 favorite]

Even the name is a rip off of The Melt Bar and Grilled chain out of Cleveland which has been around since '07.
posted by octothorpe at 3:45 AM on June 1, 2017 [4 favorites]

I worked for them for over a year on their Melt Buses a few years back. It was the best. job. ever. The upper management and hr was completely inept - they thought they could run day to day operations from behind computers in a fancy SOMA office just looking at data and throwing money at every problem. It was hilarious, because they had a *lot* of money.

But because we were food trucks, we were completely outside of their control. Usually it was wonderful - they would regularly overestimate the amount of food, so we'd just secretly hand it out for free to anyone who asked so that we wouldn't have to 86 it. Also you can trade a fresh grilled cheese for anything you really want at a concert or party. But sometimes it was actually dangerous - after months of me trying to call mgmt's attention to the used up tires on one of the buses, they blew out on the 101 and we almost crashed. And that was not the only such dangerous situation I can think of.

To be fair, they really never spared expense at ingredients and preparation, the quality really was good, and as crew we always tried to add and give out more than officially allowed, but it was a completely unrealistic business model, and we were wondering how long it would take for the whole company to finally collapse.

Good times :)
posted by mit5urugi at 4:01 AM on June 1, 2017 [35 favorites]

The Ohio Melt chain linked by octothorpe is deeelish. If you come across one, don't skip it, thinking it's the same place. Their sandwiches are the grilled cheese you want and need.
posted by I_Love_Bananas at 4:17 AM on June 1, 2017 [2 favorites]

The bit about having invented the fancy machine that can make you a grilled cheese sandwich in 45 seconds is what caught my eye. Because - how many people do you know that would want one of those things in their home? I spent the whole rest of the article wondering "well, if the restaurant was going under, why didn't they close it, and then try to come up with a home version of that thing and start selling that as an appliance? They'd make a mint."
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 4:37 AM on June 1, 2017 [3 favorites]

I think segways have found an economic function of enabling even fatter mall cops. It's not exactly disruptive though unless maybe they secretly exist to fatten up cops for the revolution?
posted by jeffburdges at 4:55 AM on June 1, 2017 [4 favorites]

Also the most important component of a grilled cheese is pickles on top.
posted by jeffburdges at 5:00 AM on June 1, 2017 [1 favorite]

The bit about having invented the fancy machine that can make you a grilled cheese sandwich in 45 seconds is what caught my eye. Because - how many people do you know that would want one of those things in their home?

Yeah, we could have had the whole Juicero saga of an overpriced and pointless kitchen appliance much earlier!
posted by ejs at 5:03 AM on June 1, 2017 [2 favorites]

“Do you want to sell sugar water for the rest of your life, or do you want to come with me and make grilled cheese sandwiches?”
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 6:04 AM on June 1, 2017 [7 favorites]

Also you can trade a fresh grilled cheese for anything you really want at a concert or party.

Please call Food Network, because I would watch the hell out of this show.
posted by Etrigan at 6:07 AM on June 1, 2017 [16 favorites]

“It’s been created in a way that a $10-per-hour worker can make a high-end restaurant-quality sandwich,” Kaplan boasted at All Things Digital.

I am pretty sure that at least eight out of the ten best sandwiches I've ever bought were made by people making less than $10 an hour, you elitist scumbag.
posted by Etrigan at 6:09 AM on June 1, 2017 [28 favorites]

I wonder what problem Kaplan thought he was solving at the beginning of this? The Flip thing I get - before cell phones there really wasn't a video corollary for relatively inexpensive digital camera. It solves a problem of people not being able to easily record digital video. Kaplan might have stumbled into it, but I can at least see how someone could look at that space and think "hey, here's an opportunity nobody's jumped on."

What opportunity did he think he saw with the Melt? Or did he think he would just be the tech guy that would apply his brains to restaurants and obviously succeed?

> The Melt deserves a place in the Dumb Money Hall of Shame next to the Segway

No argument against the Melt, but I still think the Segway is a dope ass machine that just costs way too much. If they were a slimmer build and cost $300-500 I think you'd see them everywhere.
posted by Tevin at 6:09 AM on June 1, 2017 [2 favorites]

Grilled cheese sandwiches are one food that's disruption/gentrification-proof for me because it's perhaps the only meal that actually tastes *better* when you use cheap, crappy ingredients. White bread, margarine, processed cheese: that's all you need. In literally any other context I'll choose nice bread and quality cheese, but none of the fancy grilled cheeses I've had at hipster joints in town can compete with the ones you can make at home for less than a buck per.
posted by The Card Cheat at 6:51 AM on June 1, 2017 [2 favorites]

Huh. The Melt just opened up in our new mall just a few minutes from our house (and it's a newly constructed indoor mall, too, which we noticed walking through yesterday felt insanely '90s). I am a huge fan of cheese, but find the restaurant a little eh. I didn't realize until this article that their gimmick is sandwiches in 45 seconds, because ours usually come out soggy and just warm instead of hot. I wonder if they make the sandwiches first and then leave them out while the fries cook. The sandwich itself is ok, but my family always settles on the restaurant instead of looking to go there.

Reading this article describe the Melt as the first national grilled cheese chain was strange, though, as the Melt isn't even the first grilled cheese-centric restaurant in our city. I have my own problems with Tom and Chee, but overall I prefer their menu to the Melt's. I had no idea I lived in such a tech-y hipster place.
posted by lilac girl at 6:52 AM on June 1, 2017 [1 favorite]

Tom and Chee, but overall I prefer their menu to the Melt's.

Have y'all heard about our lord and savior the grilled cheese donut? Now that's a disruption.
🍩
posted by Nonsteroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drug at 7:10 AM on June 1, 2017 [2 favorites]

Use mayo instead of butter on your grilled cheeses. Boom, disrupted. Thank me later.
posted by davros42 at 7:30 AM on June 1, 2017 [6 favorites]

“It turns out when you put soup and grilled cheese together, it’s really wonderful,” Kaplan informed his audience, as if divulging a trade secret.

Barely into the article, and already my schaden is freuding so hard.

Also WRT the Segway: yeah, they look kinda dorky, but I tell you whut: when I went to Washington and thought that I'd get between the major monuments on foot, and realized a little too late that the National Mall is two miles long, the tourists who were casually zipping up and down the Mall while I was hobbling back to the Metro stop looked pretty sweet on their Segways.
posted by Halloween Jack at 7:39 AM on June 1, 2017 [4 favorites]

Another Bay Area local frustrated by the mediocre product at The Melt. I go about once a year, mostly to laugh at Michael Moritz's investment for Sequoia. I mean these VC schmucks make a huge public splash about how brilliant and important they are for innovation. So when they do something dumb you have to savor it.

Sadly it's hard to savor anything at The Melt. I do go about once a year, and every year it's still disappointing. The primary problem is they don't put enough butter on the bread, nor enough cheese in the sandwich. It's a thin, mean grilled cheese, the opposite of the dairy indulgence you get at a place like Max's. And the whole experience is unpleasant, the awkward attempt at high tech ordering, the seating, the lighting.

It's curious to me The Melt happened and is such a failure. They should have spent more time studying In-n-Out burger. That franchise has absolutely nailed the experience of an industrialized, efficient process for fast food. And the product is pretty good. Or look to Super Duper or Shake Shack, if you want to go up-market. The Melt feels more like a Taco Bell.

If [the Segway] were a slimmer build and cost $300-500 I think you'd see them everywhere.

Oh, you mean hoverboards!
posted by Nelson at 7:39 AM on June 1, 2017 [2 favorites]

Our grilled cheese, which was met with rave reviews, was simple. Thick, hand cut hickory bacon in the middle of Gouda, on some decent bread. For a little extra, smoked cheddar grilled into the outside of the bread (it gets all crispy!). For a little more extra, some pulled pork mixed with South Carolina style mustard bbq sauce. As Al Pacino said in Heat, "You could get killed walking your doggy," why scrimp on a proper grilled cheese?
posted by Ghidorah at 7:42 AM on June 1, 2017 [1 favorite]

Anyone who orders a grilled cheese sandwich in a restaurant for freaking $5 is a complete rube and fully deserves the fleecing.

Not to defend The Melt in any way shape or form, but in SF a $5 sandwich is on the cheaper side.
posted by aspo at 7:42 AM on June 1, 2017 [5 favorites]

Even in not-SF it's hard to find a sandwich for less than $8 or so these days.
posted by octothorpe at 7:51 AM on June 1, 2017 [3 favorites]

> “It turns out when you put soup and grilled cheese together, it’s really wonderful,” Kaplan informed his audience, as if divulging a trade secret.

This reminds me of the time my wife and I had my parents over for dinner and my dad (God bless him) said "You know, wine and cheese go *really well* together."

> Even in not-SF it's hard to find a sandwich for less than $8 or so these days.

In Toronto you can still get a restaurant grilled cheese sandwich for ninety-five Canadian cents.
posted by The Card Cheat at 7:57 AM on June 1, 2017 [1 favorite]

Even in not-SF it's hard to find a sandwich for less than $8 or so these days.

I don't think I'd be willing to pay $8 for a sandwich somebody just found
posted by aubilenon at 7:57 AM on June 1, 2017 [13 favorites]

In Toronto you can still get a restaurant grilled cheese sandwich for ninety-five Canadian cents.

Sure, under communism.
posted by Artw at 7:58 AM on June 1, 2017 [10 favorites]

Even in not-SF it's hard to find a sandwich for less than $8 or so these days.

Are we both excluding fast food, and counting Subway as fast food? Because otherwise, no, not really.
posted by Halloween Jack at 8:00 AM on June 1, 2017

Alright all this talk about the article is fine but when do we skip to the part where we share our grilled cheese recipes and argue about which is best and whether or not it's actual grilled cheese or some sort of next generation abomination of our childhood comfort food?
posted by Tevin at 8:05 AM on June 1, 2017 [3 favorites]

Childhood grilled cheese - One Toas-Tite iron. 2 pieces of bread. 2 pieces of Kraft American singles. Butter. Smoosh ingredients into Toas-Tite iron. Rip off anything hanging outside. Hold over an open flame on the stove flipping over to grill both sides until the smoke alarm goes off = sealed grilled cheese so hot it will burn the entire inside of your mouth and you won't care at all.
posted by Sophie1 at 8:10 AM on June 1, 2017 [2 favorites]

Have y'all heard about our lord and savior the grilled cheese donut? Now that's a disruption.

I present to you the Mallorcas of San Juan (NYT). The ones we had at Cafeteria Mallorca would be best described as a grilled ham and cheese on a powdered donut. They were delicious.
posted by fedward at 8:47 AM on June 1, 2017

when do we skip to the part where we share our grilled cheese recipes

I mean, aren't a lot of them just "put good cheeses between good breads, butter it, and cook it just right?" And if you do the last step right you can slouch on the first two.
posted by aubilenon at 8:53 AM on June 1, 2017 [1 favorite]

The bit about having invented the fancy machine that can make you a grilled cheese sandwich in 45 seconds is what caught my eye. Because - how many people do you know that would want one of those things in their home?

That is a solved problem, at least in some parts of the world.
posted by Spacelegoman at 8:56 AM on June 1, 2017 [1 favorite]

I can't really share my recipe unless you have the same gas stove and the same gas pressure we do, because me telling you "start on 4 and turn it to 3 after you've buttered both sides" won't really be helpful. Also while 4 is the middle position on the knob it's what I use for medium high so YMMV (Your Melt May Vary).
posted by fedward at 8:58 AM on June 1, 2017

Recipe:

Real sour sourdough bread
1 layer of sharp cheddar
1 layer of American

butter your bread
cook it like a grilled cheese

Add ketchup if you're me. Add sriracha if you're my husband. Lick the butter off your fingers at the end.

MMmmm I think I need a grilled cheese. I also enjoy all variety of melts which as our reddit friend so eloquently stated, are not grilled cheese. My favorite form of a melt is what they called a "toastie" in South Africa: a grilled cheese but it had a little bit of cooked onion in the middle. Ideally cooked over a campfire. I love those.
posted by Emmy Rae at 9:05 AM on June 1, 2017

They put two sandwich grilling devices in the cafe at work. They have 20, 30, 40 and 45 second settings, which I though were ridiculous.

But then I tried them. Real good melty and crunchy grilled cheese in 45 seconds.

I just looked them up, they are the Melt machines, and they cost 10k each. 10 fucking kilodollars!

But I've been using them almost every day. Yesterday I made a mustard, roast beef, cheese and pickle juice sandwich that was great.

Just like with the juicero (which has a pretty good power supply and gear train), I really wish they go out of businness​ soon and their hardware starts showing up in auction sites at a fraction of the price.
posted by Dr. Curare at 9:18 AM on June 1, 2017 [4 favorites]

Seconding the mayo coating. My grandma taught me that. Between the oil and the egg, you get a lovely crispy French toast (without the vanilla flavor) style crust on it. Lovely.
posted by Samizdata at 9:19 AM on June 1, 2017 [2 favorites]

The croutons on the Caesar salad at The Melt are tiny little grilled cheese sandwiches! That's a crouton I would pet.
posted by bendy at 9:22 AM on June 1, 2017 [8 favorites]

The bit about having invented the fancy machine that can make you a grilled cheese sandwich in 45 seconds is what caught my eye. Because - how many people do you know that would want one of those things in their home?

I work in restaurant tech, so maybe I can offer some pointers. This kind of stuff is usually called rapid-cooking technology, and there's usually microwaves involved somehow.

The company that made the first inroads into restaurants with this is Turbo Chef. They make the toaster ovens that Subway uses to heat the sandwiches. It's a high-speed convection oven with a microwave built-in. So you're burning the outside of the sandwich while zapping the inside. It's supposed to avoid the soggy-bread situation you get when you normally nuke a cold sandwich. It works well enough for a Subway-type joint.

You also see their next-gen Sǒta Oven in a lot of places now like Starbucks to heat their breakfast sandwiches. It's a very nice machine.

I spent the whole rest of the article wondering "well, if the restaurant was going under, why didn't they close it, and then try to come up with a home version of that thing and start selling that as an appliance? They'd make a mint."

Frankly I was going to call bullshit on the "oh we developed this technology custom" because these kinds of sandwich presses have been around a while. My take is that they had Electrolux just tweak the default settings on the machine for their particular menu. Companies do that all the time, like the large burger chains. If they want a button preprogrammed with a Quarter Pounder's time and temperature, they get it.

So what I was getting at is that you can buy a home version of this through Turbo Chef's sister company Viking Residential. It's a bit pricey.
posted by JoeZydeco at 9:25 AM on June 1, 2017 [12 favorites]

I am utterly faithless when it comes to a "correct" way to grill cheese. I mean, I was raised in a "butter the outside of bread before it goes in the pan" household, but these days, I switch between the regular buttered bread and other options:

-mayonnaise on bread
-butter melted in pan, bread placed in butter, add cheese and top slice, melt more butter before flipping onto second slice
-olive oil brushed on bread w/basting brush

Any method that is faster than waiting for butter to reach room temp if I'm in a place with cold butter will do. Any bread. Any cheese. If the bread gets crispy and the cheese gets melty, I'm into it.
posted by a fiendish thingy at 9:29 AM on June 1, 2017 [1 favorite]

As a mayonnaise enthusiast this thread has already inspired me. There are grilled cheese experiments in my future!
posted by Emmy Rae at 9:33 AM on June 1, 2017

I'm with a fiendish thingy on the butter-melted-in-pan method of grilled cheese. As someone who keeps the butter in the fridge (Because that way the mice don't eat it, all right. I have two very lazy cats and a creaky old house in the boondocks and I am beyond tired of toothmarks on the butter so I keep it in the fridge now. I also keep the sugar in the fridge because ants. Look, judge all you want. Flour's in the fridge too so that it doesn't get bugs in it. If it helps, eggs are on the counter.), this method means grilled cheeses without torn bread. I'm a fan.
posted by which_chick at 11:55 AM on June 1, 2017 [1 favorite]

The best grilled cheese sandwich is purchased for $1 in the parking lot after any Grateful Dead show.
posted by funkiwan at 12:09 PM on June 1, 2017 [2 favorites]

Or look to Super Duper or Shake Shack, if you want to go up-market. The Melt feels more like a Taco Bell.

This is what I keep coming back to. I realize they have national ambitions (ridiculous ones, with their 500 stores in five years plan), but their position never made any sense in downtown San Francisco. At least based on what The Melt used to serve, Subway offered more value in terms of quantity of food for your buck, and then there were plenty of local downtown lunch spots nearby like Super Duper and Osais Grill that offered tasty food in larger portions for a couple of dollars more. Factor in the combo you needed to have a suitable meal out of The Melt, and the cost difference wasn't that significant.

San Francisco has fantastic grilled cheese made with fresh local sourdough. It tends to cost like $10-$15 and comes from places like American Grilled Cheese Kitchen, Cowgirl Creamery, Tartine, etc...

So in SF, they're in a weird place where they're a bit above Taco Bell, but just below many of the quality local options. That's not to say that it can't work in a shopping mall somewhere, but that San Francisco store has always struck me as odd.
posted by zachlipton at 12:39 PM on June 1, 2017 [2 favorites]

You know what's even better than butter on the outside of a grilled cheese? Freshly grated Parmesan. MOAR CHEESE!

Also, my summary is this... a mediocre white man swimming in privilege and money thinks: I knew nothing about X, and somehow through random luck and privilege I "succeeded", therefore since I know nothing about Y, PROFIT!

The level of narcissistic idiocy in the valley is staggering.
posted by petrilli at 12:40 PM on June 1, 2017 [2 favorites]

As a kid I made myself an awful lot of "grilled" cheese sandwiches by toasting a couple slices of bread in the toaster, then putting a slice of pasteurized process cheese product (AKA Kraft Singles) in between and microwaving for exactly twelve seconds. Pretty good for what it is, requires little to no cleanup, and I never once burned the house down.
posted by asperity at 12:50 PM on June 1, 2017 [1 favorite]

I knew nothing about X, and somehow through random luck and privilege I "succeeded", therefore since I know nothing about Y, PROFIT!

You forgot the part where the mediocre white man with money gets more money from others simply by virtue of having a lot of money to start with.

Sequoia could have invested 8 figures in a number of innovative chefs and promising restaurant concepts, but instead chose a guy simply because he suckered Cisco out of half a billion dollars.
posted by JoeZydeco at 1:11 PM on June 1, 2017 [2 favorites]

Just came in to say that I had one of their Macaroni & Cheese grilled sandwiches once and I remember it being pretty good. They have also been an OK place to get a grilled cheese from for my kids when they are being fussy. I had no idea they were trying to disrupt anything (it's a grilled cheese...its pretty much perfect as is!)
posted by inflatablekiwi at 1:17 PM on June 1, 2017

This reminds me that I need to haul the mandoline out of storage so I can get nice even apple slices for the inside of grilled cheese sandwiches. My knife skills top out at "eh, I guess that'll do."
posted by Karmakaze at 1:28 PM on June 1, 2017 [1 favorite]

I have used a toasted sandwich maker and I have tried the method of frying a cheese sandwich in butter till the cheese melts. The results are not the same. America, is your stomach made of iron? How can you eat that, I thought I would die.

As regards the article, probably optimistic to think you can succeed at fast food when you don't really appreciate why people eat it.
posted by glasseyes at 2:32 PM on June 1, 2017 [1 favorite]

Grilled cheese sandwiches are easy:
Slice of brioche
Ham
Gruyere cheese
Slice of brioche with mayo
Ham
Gruyere cheese
Slice of brioche
Press down
Dip in egg & milk mixture
Fry on all sides in butter.

What's so hard about that?
posted by happyroach at 4:45 PM on June 1, 2017 [1 favorite]

…it's a croque monsieur instead of a grilled cheese?

Ain't no egg-and-milk-mixture coming within a mile of my grilled cheese.
posted by Lexica at 5:26 PM on June 1, 2017 [6 favorites]

But I also think the technical claims are probably all lies.

Would it be fantastic to keep fries crispy after an hour away from the heat? Yeah you bet, that's exciting. When a "tech company" claims they have done this, with the help of "NASA consultants"? That's hype, like Elizabeth Holmes's no-ouchy blood assay. All of this crap is vaporware.

Probably correct. Without examining the NASA link, Kaplan doesn't seem very credible at all (and does seem like he's a few investors short of an IPO, figuratively speaking.)

But I think both keeping fries hot and crispy for an hour and keeping cheese, err, melty - are at least possible in theory. That sounds like a very interesting food science rabbit hole to dive into. *waves*
posted by iffthen at 10:36 PM on June 1, 2017 [1 favorite]

Just wait till users figure out they can just squeeze the grilled cheese sandwich out of the foil packet by hand.
posted by sebastienbailard at 12:19 AM on June 2, 2017 [1 favorite]

But I think both keeping fries hot and crispy for an hour and keeping cheese, err, melty - are at least possible in theory.

It's done every day in a holding cabinet called a CVap (controlled vapor and pressure). CVaps were invented by Winston Shelton at the request of Colonel Sanders for use in his chicken restaurants. They're sold in all kinds of configurations now.
posted by JoeZydeco at 9:34 AM on June 2, 2017 [3 favorites]

We went to The Melt a lot (maybe more than we should have) when we lived by one. We have young kids. They like grilled cheese. They liked the fun sticker sheets that they gave out. And we liked the extra yummy stuff they put in the sandwiches aside from just cheese. But now we don't live close to one so we don't go. So maybe that's why they're not doing so well any more.
posted by zsazsa at 11:55 AM on June 2, 2017

2:1 mix of finely grated old (2+ years) cheddar and grana padano. Let stand at room temperature for at least 20 minutes. Season with black pepper and sweet (or smoked sweet) paprika. Unsalted butter on the outside, or course.
posted by scruss at 9:57 AM on June 3, 2017

At the Sydney Easter Show, an annual carnival/country fair hybrid, there were a bunch of stands selling sandwich press grilled cheese sandwiches for $2.
My American friends might shrug, but at the Sydney show a serve of fries is $6, a burger $11. This place is like a football stadium or concert venue for gouging food prices. In USA purchase price parity it would be something like 50 cents.
So a $2 option made me take notice. It was cheap and cheerful, two slices of buttered white bread, a slice of cheddar. Butter on the outside for texture. Grill for a minute or so. The press made 6 at a time and they had several presses. They sold them as fast as they made them. They tasted pretty good.

The other thing to note is having a home sandwich press of jaffle maker is very normal all over Australia. It would be a rare week when we don't have toasted sandwiches on multiple occasions. Get with the program America.
posted by bystander at 5:34 AM on June 7, 2017

I made grilled cheese in leftover dhalpuri roti this week, and damn was it good.

The 80s Breville invasion never made it to North America. I blame the low voltage and impatience.
posted by scruss at 6:45 AM on June 10, 2017