Like many mostly decent and somewhat hungry citizens, during the pandemic I ordered a few meals off of an online delivery service, most notably from Postmates. And while they offer eats from many local favorites such as The Mule, Grand House, and Ingrid’s Kitchen, I came to notice there’s a plateful of restaurants on there that I’ve never even heard of.
With erotically-charged names like The Hot Italian, Firebelly Wings and Mothership Pizza, curiosity got the best of me and I looked up their listed addresses for, perhaps, a future review; my pseudo-investigation found that many of these sandwiches, wings and salads were coming from the same restaurants under different names, most notably either Pizza House or Henry Hudson’s.
I was going to initially write them off, but one eatery that caught my eye was a joint called The Grilled Cheese Society. Located at the home of a Henry Hudson’s on Google Maps—it mostly intrigued me because, I’m ashamed to say, a grilled cheese sandwich is the one thing that I can’t make and here was a secret club that holds them in high esteem.
While I’m sure this may garner a few insults, I think that making a grilled cheese is something that might be a bit of problem for many of us—I mean, I just recently learned that you’re supposed to butter the bread on both sides. So, really, a restaurant such as The Grilled Cheese Society is an ingenious idea. But how is it in practice?
I ordered a couple of signature sandwiches—as well as some good lookin’ fries—from Postmates and, in about an hour, they were delivered in a clear sealed bag, a novel enough approach to safe food handling, especially in this day and age.
I started off with the Classic Roosevelt ($7.00), which is your basic grilled cheese sandwich. It’s literally just a few slices of half-melted American on two toasted pieces of white bread, nothing more, nothing less. While it was a merely okay meal for me, I know my 8-year-old nephew would’ve liked it, at least until he got bored, left half of it on his plate and went back to playing video games.
There’s something strange in my neighborhood, and they’re these Ghost Fries ($5.00). They’re supposed to be French fries with ghost pepper spices—the hottest seasoning around, see—but mine must have been lost and forgotten, because these were just damp bar fries; to be fair, the condensed steam always makes fries from Postmates a scary proposition.
But, perhaps the most redeeming dish to be offered at the Grilled Cheese Society is the Del Rio Caliente ($10.00), a big sandwich I kept calling the Los Del Rio all night, in tribute to the Macarena. On two pressed pieces of wheat bread, inside is a fuego mixture of chorizo, queso blanco, pepper jack cheese, roasted jalapenos, bell peppers, and poblanos, along with some “Society” sauce.
Like a dated Looney Tunes character, my scorching mouth shot flamboyant flames across the living room, the well-placed heat making this sandwich something to internally extinguish as I downed a few bottles of cold water. It was a unique Latin sensation that made this delivery very worthwhile; does Hudson’s regularly carry this?
Along with other grilled cheese sammies like the hamburger-esque Patty Andrews, the eggs and bacon besmirched Bambino and the avocado-heavy Shirley Temple, as well as wings, soups and hot potato salad, the Grilled Cheese Society is worth an order or two.
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