The Cooking Critic

Everyone knows you have to practice in order to demolish your opponents. The newly named Team “We Aim To Cheese” did just that (practice, no demolishing yet) one rainy Monday evening. Of the three grilled cheese categories at the Grilled Cheese Invitational (or GCI for short) hosted in Downtown Los Angeles on April 1, we are entering two. Categories are: standard grilled cheese, alternative grilled cheese and dessert grilled cheese. We fully intend to win the last two categories by virtue of our delicious sandwiches, but certainly the hilarious names we voted on will also assist us. The GCI, to my understanding, is one big party with stovetop stations for grilled cheese making, and you have to produce at least four cheesy sandwiches divided into fourths. When you finish grilling a grilled cheese, a little flag goes up, a runner comes to the table and the sandwich is distributed to the crowd to be eaten and judged. There’s also a cash bar, but I’m foggy on the rest of the details. Rest-assured, those of you dying to know more about the GCI, I’ll report back with clearer details once my team and I return victorious from said gathering.

Obviously, I can’t give too many details about our sandwiches or their names at this juncture since I’m sure competitors are trolling my blog in an attempt to learn our secrets and foil us. Instead I will provide you with a picture story of our evening with captions.

Here are the cooks (note Rob’s spiffy apron and look of suspicion:

and Christine’s amazing ability to change her eye color to match her top):

Here are some of the eaters and fellow teammates reacting to the grilled cheeses with shock:

and amazement:

Here Maggie lounges with a strawberry, contemplates team names and secretly hopes that someone will hang grapes over her head while she eats them at her leisure:

Here I will give the full name of the people in attendance, so if they are Googled, the Googler will be led to my blog: Rob Saccenti, Leslie Limerick, Jim Sutherland, Steve Hanna, Michael Zimmer, and Luke Godwin (who thinks he should get royalties for use of his name in this blog. When I told him no one else suggested such things, he said his name was worth far more than anyone else’s. He said it. It’s true.) Actually, that’s only about half the people in attendance. The others have already been mentioned by full name on this blog (or their last names are not known to me), so they can’t help me with Googlers. But so they won’t get mad at me, I’ll give their first names: Shahan, Maggie, Shayna, Stacey, Adam, and Brandon.

And here’s why other Grilled Cheese Invitational contestants should be fearful at the thought of competing against us:

Look at those beautiful, well-named, tasty sandwiches.

And another reason competitors should fear us? We have team aprons. That’s right. Team. Aprons. First the 3rd 2nd Annual Grilled Cheese Competition, next the world!