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Contradiction is part of the core curriculum of college life. It’s a time of striving, worldliness, perspective, difference making, while most of at least two years are spent focused solely on how to dupe the local liquor store counter man. It’s a time of intelligent thinking and wisdom, combined with poisoning brain cells and endless cigarettes.
For me, there was a Woody Allen-ish romantic montage of Nietzsche, lofty poetry and independent city living, all while, really, mom paid the rent, and my palate was sated, happily, lustily even, by grilled cheese. Not just grilled cheese, but a hastily slapped together, George Foreman-ed sandwich, with whatever-was-on-sale enriched flour white bread, two Kraft singles, and, nothing else. I’d have a second, had an extra long nap fortified my appetite enough. Which it often had.
It wasn’t just because the kitchen of the slum-lorded duplex on 18th and Kilbourn was generally a war zone, with but a sliver of Formica counter space to concoct any kind of foodstuff without contact with multitude expanding bio experiments. Or that I was a poor college student, subsisting on Leinenkugels, dreams and depleted funds from too frequent late night forays to Marquette Gyros. Well, it was that. But, also, the fact remains: grilled cheese is the most satisfying of youth-time creature comforts, running alongside, perhaps even topping, peanut butter and jelly.
After all, there are fewer ingredients, yet more magic: The calculus involves the Maillard reaction: the chemical breakdown between amino acids and sugars that makes toast taste better than bread, and cheese—ideally, unsophisticated American—transforming itself into a rivulet-like goo of warm, salty smackiness. It’s the richest of hoped for satisfactions when you’re halfway between the kitchen’s of youth and the future apartments of the partially employed, shivering yourself to sleep on a futon, drunk on Henry Miller hot plate reveries.
It was about when I started having the funds to add bacon to the formula, to take the time to butter the bread, possibly chop tomatoes, to splatter with Frank’s Red Hot or whatever was on hand, that I realized I was actually, maybe, becoming an adult. Ready for the sophistication of a complex world, for the nuances of real life, which is best-tackled when you embrace your roots, your simplest times, the grandma-makes-it-best comforts, and build upon them.
The habits of youth aren’t all meant to be gotten over. Sometimes they are just in need of tweaking. College wasn’t the time for a lot of things. But with some remove, it’s nice to look up, out, and sample Milwaukee’s best grown up takes on the simplest, most childish of caloric releases.
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Elsa's on the Park
A place no stranger to contradiction, Elsa’s is part bustling, waiters-in-ties, big city gastropub, with ornate doorways, columns and a tablecloth aesthetic; and part fat guy destination of rich burgers, pork chop sandwiches and stellar chicken wings. There might be some sticker shock at the sight of the tightly packaged 10-buck All American Grilled Cheese, but there’s an attention to detail, starting with the golden brown char on the bread. Then there’s the medley meld factor—American, white cheddar, Colby and Swiss topple and coalesce, with thick cut Nueske’s bacon struggling for air, asserting itself with grease through the dense meltiness. Tomato slices make it all pop—warm and cool, heavy and bright contrasting factors that is the grilled cheese at its best. A harmonious dichotomy. Like dining next to Herb Kohl while licking your fingers of cheese goop and Texas Gunslinger jalapeno hot sauce—a uniquely Elsa’s experience.
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Saz's State House
Between the catering gigs and the ubiquitous summer festival circuit presence, it’s easy to see why Saz’s is oft forgotten as a Cream City brick and mortar spot. But inside the West Side joint you can find a solid and friendly old school circle bar, with dozens of TVs worth of sports, signed jerseys, Christmas lights in January and a train going by out back setting the scene like a forgotten industrial corner pocket of a Norman Rockwell. There is also something of a signature sandwich therein, though the Brisket Grilled Cheese is just as much a “melt” as anything. Either way, cheddar can be tough to truly make melt, and here they go halfway, creating a more solid pocket for the buttery, fatty brisket wedges. Pork fat is still king within the folds of a grilled cheese, but the beef is an inspired turn, with the sharp, earthiness of the package cut by a not-too-syrupy onion BBQ sauce. Lightly toasted sourdough keeps things neat, a quick package of meat, cheese and bread, like you were at Summerfest and sliding toward the next stage. Here though, there is nothing next but another beer and match on the tube.
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Palomino
It’s not exactly a grilled cheese, but the pimento—the P part of the PBLT—takes on such an ideal of swirling soft meltiness, piqued by peppery brightness, that it’s in the appropriate hot spirit. Spread generous between a just-short-of-toasted Italian hoagie, made supple and sturdy by crisp lettuce, fatty and happy by thick cut, black-streaked bacon, it’s a sandwich luxurious enough for guilt-laden satisfaction, but tightly enough structured to dip greedily in Pal’s tangy homemade hot sauce. It’s hard to endorse anything on the menu that isn’t the griddled brisket burger or the hot fried chicken sandwich. But, the pimento—warm, creamy, spicy—especially when prefaced by the curds—light battered, so sheeny and bubbling they might as well have been fried at the table—makes for the best possible Milwaukee cheese binge. Even in a city where that can be done on every street corner.
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West Allis Cheese & Sausage Shoppe
It’s hard to feel anything but gloom on a late January Monday, post snow and mid state of slush, a time of gray in the sky and soul. So, it’s really the greatest testament to this friendly ‘Stallis corner grocer that keeps making “Best Of” lists that they can warm such a situation with a bit of comfort and coziness. They call it the Cheesy Joe, and add sloppy Joe mix to make for a double dose of childhood comfort in one adult-leaning sandwich. While it’s a combo and name your dad might have to describe a favorite late night snack after too much of his special juice, there’s a rich golden brown finish on the white bread, indicating the amount of butter used for everything at grandma’s house when you were tiny and she deemed it necessary to put “meat on your bones.” Between, two warm, liquefying slices of American envelope the salty, crumbly beef. By the end of the sandwich, especially, the two components are running tag team, softening together, entwined, fond of each other, like a sated eater should certainly feel about life and the rest of the day. If that doesn’t work one of their Bloody Mary specials may do the trick—they garnish with a mini grilled cheese.
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Camino
Maybe nothing captures the Fifth Ward flux like Camino’s grilled cheese—it takes the greasy, buttery, flattop texture of an old school diner melt and infuses it with kimchi. Americana nostalgia meets ancient Korean side dish staple. It’s Zad’s welcoming the worldwide foodie aesthetic of Cermak Fresh Market. It’s Rockwell Automation across the street from high-end condos and the pricey, pristine Laughing Taco. Predictably, despite the sweet roll of the fusiony name “kimcheese,” it actually hardly works on paper—dichotomous, yes, as kimchi is primarily a side, and we’re used to it mostly in rice or sausage situations. But, also, between the aging vegetables and multiple cheeses, isn’t that an intestinal overload of microorganisms? In practice, it actually takes a mouthful minute too. But once they settle together, it’s simple: the salty, spicy, brininess of the fermented cabbage mash props up the liquid goo of very melty American, Swiss and provolone with an intense, pungent punch. Like a pepper jack, but with live chiles. And there’s plenty of residual sauciness to keep the tongue bouncing and guessing and trying to categorize throughout. It’s a grilled cheese of happy co-existence, an innovation on the simplest of staples, showing you don’t have to choose exclusively between old and familiar and new and daring.
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Uber Tap Room & Cheese Bar
On the weird gauntlet of 3rd Street Downtown drinking, often only explored pre or post Bradley Center, this generically named cheese castle stands alone. It only takes a few steps in the door for a sharp aroma punch of the wall-full of milk proteins and fat, and the deceivingly simple menu cashes in on their weapons cache, featuring cheese boards, mac n’ cheese, and a thinking fat man’s glut of grilled cheese—salami and cheese, BBQ pork and cheese, waffle grilled cheese. Any should do the trick because the technique seems perfect. An example: the Spicy Gourmet with smoked pepper jack and ghost pepper cheddar yields an inner mash that is piping and just this side of soupy, with stretchy strings of rubbery happiness connecting mouth to cheese pocket post bite, the softness contrasted by a crunchiness of crusts, the griddle char marks on the bread bleeding butter, garlic aioli swimming throughout subtle and spicy, a bright punch of scrunchy sundried tomatoes drowning in all the delectable, magma-ish mouth-fill.
Even the presentation is careful and neat—the two halves stacked ceremoniously among a smattering of extra salty chips. Before you realized going out Downtown was mostly homogenized meatheadedness, these are the kinds of visceral pleasures one might imagine Old World 3rd Street could afford. The 36 Wisconsin beers on tap make it easy to not feel too nostalgic that you grew up past those innocent college days. And such serious takes on beer and cheese help make it more than passable that this is what we’re known for as a people, and that a Kings vs. Bucks matchup is now a big Saturday night out on the frigid winter Milwaukee streets.
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Comet Café
Aside from being named for a tabloid headline-grabbing statutory rapist whose mistress shot his wife in the face, there’s nothing to not like about the Buttafuoco, Comet’s cheesy tomato menu star. From the black char spots from the broiler on the rich and creamy mozz and provolone mix, to the way said cheeses drape over and fuse to the Italian hoagie roll, to the roll itself, so soft, just getting toasty, to the occasional brace of red onion, mixed with running warm mayo, from the hot pepper mash pop, and tomatoes that somehow don’t interfere with the structural integrity. There’s lettuce on top too, but it seems like a joke, such is the bruising nature of this behemoth, which includes a bit of everything on the taste spectrum. It’s both exciting and a bit too much. Leaving bad breath and the need for a nap—like so many good memories of first apartment East Side nights. It’s a sandwich indicative of the young neighborhood itself, of “Welcome to Adulthood”—reminding that it is both delicious and daunting, a continuous race for funds for such cheesy vices, and is but a struggle to not get fat on the finer things.
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