A lot of things make my heart melt: baby goats, laughing toddlers, grilled cheese sandwiches made with fresh ingredients. The Melt Shop is bringing the latter to Washington D.C, to the delight of cheese-lovers whose hearts go pitter-patter at the sight of melted cheddar on toast.
The Melt Shop is a grilled cheese restaurant that opened in New York City in 2011, churning out the traditional comfort food your mom might have made you as a kid. If it reminds me of home cooking, then what makes the Melt Shop special, you ask?
With Melt Shop, we set out to make the best damn sandwich on the planet. Period. Better than our mom’s (sorry, mom). Better than your mom’s. It’s the comfort food you love, but like you’ve never had it before. Next level stuff, made from only the best artisanal ingredients, fresh-baked bread every day and the best cheese a man can find.
With menu items like the Truffle Melt (with Harvarti, truffle oil, and arugula on fresh baked sourdough bread) and the Buffalo (featuring fried chicken draped in pepper jack and blue cheese sauce on sourdough), the Melt Shop has made known their niche. And the food world is starting to take notice of this growing enterprise—Zagat chose Melt Shop founder and managing partner, Spencer Rubin, as one of New York’s 30 under 30 for 2014.
Even with the notoriety of Melt Shop on the rise, it is a bit of a surprise that it should open just five blocks away from Grilled Cheese D.C. However, GCDC, which just opened in the spring of 2014, opened not far from Sona Creamery, a cheese and wine bar that perched itself on Capitol Hill in 2013. Despite all of this fromage existing in one city, each location seems to have its speciality, and the people of D.C aren’t protesting all of the new options. After all, it’s better than cheese dust, right?
At the end of the day, the Melt Shop is excited to be expanding to their first location outside of New York. “The space is larger than our NYC locations, so we are psyched to have the opportunity to spread our wings and check out this new amazing city,” said Rubin. The D.C location, at 1901 L St. NW, features the same fresh sandwiches, cheesy tater tot sides, and hand-spun milkshakes that made the store a hit in NYC. It seems all of those go over well with the D.C crowd because the Melt Shop announced through Facebook on February 18, its opening day, that they had already sold out of food by 2:15 p.m. Talk about a warm welcome.
The owner said he has his “fingers crossed the Obamas stop by.” I think the only thing standing in their way is a deadlocked cabinet that can’t decide which Melt Shop grilled cheese to order for the next diplomatic meeting.
Featured Photo Credit: Melt Shop via NY Daily News
Jacqueline Roman
Jacqueline Roman is an Emerson student in Boston who never misses an opportunity to make a cheese pun and utilizes her social media accounts to post pictures of her pride and joy: cheeseboards. She has other interests but does not brie-lieve they are as gouda.
