Grilled Cheese Battle

A couple of years ago I tasted a bunch of breakfast sandwiches from trucks on campus and deemed a winner. With the nice spring weather coming soon and two new grilled cheese trucks near my office, I’ve decided to start a grilled cheese battle. Here’s the matrix (a possible 10 points per category):

Overall appearance
Overall taste
Size
Greasiness
Cheese (quality and quantity)
Carbohydrate Delivery System (credit: Matt Palmer)
Price
Extras
Service and timing
Accuracy of order
Total score: Possible 100

Stay tuned.

Suzi’s breakfast sandwich

I think I am officially all breakfast sandwiched out. They’ve lost their charm. They’ve all started running together.

I met a little girl recently named Skye whose mother owned a small market. This little girl was friendly and talkative and I learned that when her aunt comes to visit her every year for a week, she gets to eat those cereals that come in small boxes (you know–the sugary chocolatey ones). But, she said, “I only get to eat that cereal when I am being spoiled by my aunt.” I said to her, “Well if you got to eat them every day they wouldn’t be as special, right?” She took a good 10 seconds to think about that until she answered, “Yes they would!” Cheeky Cutie.

Well, because I have eaten a breakfast sandwich every week for the past 11 weeks, they definitely aren’t as special to me as they were when I started working where food trucks lined every street. (And I highly doubt that Skye would have kept the same feelings towards the special cereal if she got to eat it year-round. Sorry, Skye.)

I went to Suzi’s this morning and decided that this sandwich was all about ratios being wrong. It tasted OK, but the egg to bacon, cheese, and bread ratio was not. I opened the foil and was scared of the egginess. I did not want to eat this sandwich.

The egg was overwhelming before I even tried it.  And how could you get proper tuckage with that much egg?  The attempt to tuck was a valiant one and even successful on one side.  Despite the overwhelming quantity, the egg was cooked fine and I liked the consistency: soft and even a bit flaky.  It was not salty enough for me, though, but I would probably eat a salt lick if it was put in front of me.

The white bread was toasted completely differently on each side.  I preferred the crunchy dark brown side as the lighter side was too mushy.  And I don’t think it was buttered at all, which made it a bit dry. I know I just said that it was mushy and dry.  But it was.

(As you can see in the photo below, I actually pulled out some of the egg.)

 The bacon was nice and chewy with a smoky flavor, but I wanted more!   The bacon and ketchup were cooked into the egg just the way I like it.

Scoring:

Overall appearance: 5

Meat: 6

Egg (quality, quantity, and tuckage): 6

Greasiness: 5

Cheese (quality and quantity): 5

Condiments (quality and quantity.): 5

Carbohydrate Delivery System (credit: Matt Palmer): 5

Price: 7 ($2.75)

Accuracy of order: 10

Overall taste: 7

Total score: 61 (tied with Adriatic Grill

Suzi’s is across from the Anderson Hall vendor strip on N. 12th St.

Adriatic Grill Breakfast Sandwich

Adriatic Grill sounds all fancy shmancy. You don’t usually find fancy shmancy on campus so I was excited to try something they served. It’s probably the cleanest food vendor on campus but the sandwich tasted really bad. All look and no substance is Adriatic Grill.

I ordered a bacon egg and cheese (big surprise) on wheat toast (wheat just escaped my lips today. Should have been white but I went with the slip.) I asked for salt/pepper/ketchup but got the damn ketchup in a packet, not on the sandwich. I have said this so many times before: it is almost breakfast sandwich suicide to give the ketchup on the side. In packets. And Hunt’s! Who likes Hunt’s ketchup? Post a comment if I am crazy and you love Hunt’s.

This might be one of the most perfect-looking sandwiches I’ve tried so far, complete with the cut in half, but the perfection ended there and I only received this superficial shell of a sandwich.

Eggs: spongy, dry, tasteless. Tuckage was great, though:

Bacon: cut in little bits but this works better if ketchup is applied to keep the bits from falling out. Not much taste but the texture was a bit like jerky.

Cheese: couldn’t taste it until half way through the sandwich and the taste was average.  The cheese was liquid while eating the first half but hardened up by the second half. A hardened, solid, glob. Look! Pathetic!

And hey you North Philadelphians, Temple students, and staff: I am running out of vendors. Let me know where I should go next!

Scoring:

Overall appearance: 10

Meat: 6

Egg (quality, quantity, and tuckage): 7

Greasiness: 5

Cheese (quality and quantity): 5

Condiments (quality and quantity.): 2

Carbohydrate Delivery System (credit: Matt Palmer): 5

Price: 7 ($2.75)

Accuracy of order: 8

Overall taste: 6

Total score: 61

Adriatic Grill is along the Anderson Hall vendor strip on N. 12th St.