Melted Cheese

Grilled Cheese with Tomato Soup (Hotel Utah, SF)

Hotel Utah may have the best variety of melted cheese available anywhere in San Francisco. From their unique fried-provolone sandwich to well-executed standards like Mac & Cheese.

Today their blackboard had a special written small in the corner:

Grilled Cheese w/ Tomato Soup, $7.50.

I couldn’t pass it up.

As you can see, great presentation of a hearty tomato soup and well-toasted whole wheat with to slices of cheddar. The sandwich is dry, and while I prefer buttery, this is great for dipping.

Blogging this from the iPhone, almost finished with my meal and back to work… with a warm belly.

[UPDATE... about 5 minutes later...]

prepped ingredients for Perivision

Get on over to Perivision’s iphone blog for Chris’s How-To on the midnight grilled cheese. His secrets involve heirloom tomato and turkey-based pepperoni.

As an engineer at Commodore-Amiga, I had unlimited access to an endless supply of Coke in a commercial beverage refrigerator stocked daily. I’m sure that fridge was the main reason that access to engineering required a specially coded card key.

A bit of melted cheese and a side of imported Coke. Made with real sugar, not corn syrup.

This quickly resulted in the discovery that too many Cokes made my mouth sticky.

I switched to diet not because of my waistline but for mouth-feel. The taste didn’t matter to me much, I sipped it while programming anyway.

As I learned later, the problem of a sticky mouth comes from corn syrup.

The Coke made with real sugar tastes as much better than corn-syrup-coke as it is better than diet, and it isn’t nearly as sticky. But how do you get the Real Sugar Thing?

Only in the United States is corn syrup cheaper than sugar and therefore used in beverages despite it tasting worse and making us fatter than regular sugar. Our government appears set on creating this undesirable situation with subsidies for corn and taxes on imported sugar. Though the sugar taxes really go back to the first congress of 1789.

The obvious answer: smuggle your Coke across the border.

Or go to the Mission for Mexican Coke that they import for you.

In this case, Taqueria San Jose on Mission at 24th served my sugar-Coke with a plate of three cheese enchiladas. I love that here they come with three rather two (as more common elsewhere).

More cheese is better. Duh!

Alas, I found the plate a bit flavorless, wanting for lack of fast sauce and suffering too-watery. The Coke was the high-point of the meal.

Pesto, avocado, tomato. Sounded like a bit much when I really just wanted cheese, but the result is balanced and exceedingly pleasant. Or is that the dry vodka martini?

The dozen motocrcles hanging from the ceiling and the warm room make for a great escape on a rainy San Francisco Sunday afternoon on 2nd street.

Frozen Cheese will do in a pinch.  This is one of my favorite kinds of frozen cheese to turn into melted cheeze.  For some reason, it is inconsistent.  Sometimes it hits the perfect consistency: stringy, chewy, meaty.  Other times, it just doesn’t quite come together.  What, like the cosmic rays have to be right along with the microwave?

Veek and Tubaman’s brunch a couple of Sundays ago included make-your-own crepes. Mine had carmelized onions, mushrooms, and a heavenly cheddar sauce poured from a small pitcher.

When elected President, I’ll mandate by executive order that every table in the nation must include a pitcher of Veek’s sauce.

I couldn’t believe how slow… and how good!

Camped in a wonderful place outside Willits, CA last weekend with a hundred or so friends.

I was ill with a stomach bug, foregoing food much of the trip. Monday morning I felt like I could finally keep something down.

Still had fixings for a few dozen grilled cheese sandwiches originally intended to spring on unsuspecting folks relaxing in a wood-fired hot tub.

Wasn’t up for making them now, either.

My friend Tim came to the rescue.

I had no idea he was such a grilled cheese expert… (more…)

Well, they have a point.

Tim Ferriss points out that this could feed ten Victoria’s Secret models for a week.

He’s only exaggerating slightly.

Outback Steakhouse Aussie Cheese Fries with Ranch Dressing
2,900 calories
182 g fat
240 g carbs

Men’s Health: “Even if you split this ‘starter’ with 3 friends, you’ll have downed a meal’s worth of calories.” They aren’t exaggerating. [Photo also from Men's Health.]

You know, the thing is, after you have the first one or two of these fries dripping in melted cheese and dipped in ranch, do you really need to eat any more from the tray? But I’ll keep eating until it’s gone. If only I could get Tim’s Victoria’s Secret supermodels to bring me this whole thing on a platter and then carry it away after I’ve had a taste of heaven!

I’ve never been to Outback Steakhouse.  Anyone want to go and share some Aussie Cheese Fries?

In lingerie?

[Also notable melted cheese from the Men's Health 20 Worst Foods in America... #3: On the Border Stacked Border Nachos and #5: Uno Chicago Grill Chicago Classic Deep Dish Pizza. "Downing this "personal" pizza is equivalent to eating 18 slices of Domino's Crunchy Thin Crust cheese pizza."  I wonder how that compares with Little Star?]

A friend works as an Interactive Strategist and just started at a new agency. She’s their first full-time hire in analytics and strategy, so she has a lot of catching up to do.

Today we caught up over lunch at Hotel Utah on 4th and Bryant, close to both our offices.

Much of her focus will be on clients Electronic Arts and Boost Mobile. Her agency has an established Account Planning function, so the qualitative work is already there. They’re transitioning the quantitative in-house over time while bolstering it.  Developing the insight sounds really interesting to me, but I wonder if it would be interesting doing the research.

Anyway, about the cheese…. (more…)