Say (grilled) cheese

Brenda Roberts cannot explain the grilled cheese phenomenon.

Just about every American craves the warm, gooey sandwich from time to time. The Cheyenne County Chamber of Commerce even made it a centerpiece of this year’s newcomer’s social, adding a grilled cheese contest to their event lineup. On film, Johnny Depp famously whipped up a batch using an iron rather than a grill.

Yes, the simple sandwich can be prepared cheaply and quickly at home, yet people order it in Roberts’ restaurant almost every day.

“It’s gotta be the Kraft cheese,” the owner of D & B Café in Dix said with a laugh.

She may just be right. While grilled sandwiches have been around since before notorious gambler John Montagu, the Earl of Sandwich, supposedly became the first person to slap something between slices of bread because he couldn’t break from a card game to eat, the American classic became popular thanks to 20th century technology.

In other words, while the combination we attribute to Sandwich has been around since ancient times, the grilled cheese sandwich of our collective memories claims a shorter lineage.

J.L. Kraft created his processed “factory cheese” around the time World War One broke out. At almost the same time, the assembly line bread slicer turned difficult white loaves into something fry cooks could fling effortlessly onto a griddle. Then came the modern roadside diner, the Great Depression and another world war, during which U.S. Navy cooks learned the art of quickly heated cheese sandwiches. In the next decades, harried baby boom mothers leaned on the recipe, adding canned tomato soup for nutritional balance.

“Tomato soup and grilled cheese—you could give it to him every day,” Roberts said, referring to her son.

History, it seems, worked in favor of the all-American combination.

D & B Café also serves grilled ham and cheese, a sandwich known in France as the croque monsieur … although the French melt good Gruyere or other regional curd onto the bread and meat, instead of molded vegetable oils. So pleasurable is this everyman café dish that Marcel Proust even mentioned it in his writing.

But that’s the joy of grilled cheese—simplicity.

"It's the easiest thing in the world to make," assured David Davis, chef at Grandma Jo's.

OK, so offers for certain versions have approached the $30,000 mark. But that’s because someone issued a dubious claim that the Virgin Mary’s image had been bronzed into the Wonder Bread. For most people, it’s a basic layering of cheese and bread, with a little butter for guidance.

Well, Davis doubles up on the cheese, letting some of it crisp up the bread's outer layer, adding texture and more flavor. Still, he admits that people will order it no matter the technique.

"It doesn't matter what kind of cheese," Davis said. "The majority don't care. I've used pepper jack--it doesn't matter."

It’s an unpretentious meal, even when dressed up—and at contests or high end restaurants, chefs have tossed in everything from arugula to lobster. Bacon is popular, as is jalapeno.

“It’s like a base coat that you can add color to,” Davis said.

Grandma Jo’s, D & B Café and other area restaurants listing grilled cheese on the menu admit that guests proffer requests—this cheese or that meat and vegetable combination—to ramp up the basic recipe. But the steady old yellow stuff and seared white bread is what diners crave when they mention grilled cheese.

“I can’t explain it,” Roberts reiterated when asked about the sandwich’s continuing popularity.