The Julien, Fontina and Pulled Beef Short Ribs, with mushrooms and shallots sautéed in a port wine reduction on 100% Red Fife wholewheat sourdough.
The Julien, a Class Act
Today we are introducing our new Feature grilled cheese. It replaces the relatively long running Silver Slugger that had all the cheese on it, with a more refined flavour. This one takes the class level up a notch here at The Construction Site Y&E. Julien in all of his wisdom made only one request when picking his featured grilled cheese. He told us to just make one with short ribs. That’s right, we’re bringing a little bistro flavour to your next grilled cheese. This new feature is relatively simple, but has a great traditional short rib flavour. First we took short ribs and pulled them to get a nice shredded beef. We then sautéed mushrooms and shallots in a homemade port wine reduction. We mixed the two together and put it all on 100% Red Fife wholewheat sourdough with Fontina cheese. Yup, we here at TCS now how to class things up a notch. Enjoy.
Rise of the Silver Slugger
The Silver Slugger, the customer selected feature replacing The A.F.T., is just that, a slugger. Jason, the man who got to pick this one, wasn’t messing around when it came to making a grilled cheese. He knew what he wanted and it had to have a lot of cheese. It packs a cheesy punch with Fontina, Cheddar and Swiss cheeses. Matched with the Panini Bianca there is enough cheese to fill all the air pockets and stand up to the dense bread. To finish off the flavour explosion are prosciutto and tomato. Yes there is a lot going on with this one, but the three cheeses blend well and it all comes together nicely.
It will be interesting to see how this one does compared to The Jack Hammer, a similar Ham/veggie style grilled cheese. I know it’s not fair to compare customer’s grilled cheeses like that. I can’t help it though, I’m the competitive type, and I view this as grilled cheese battle royale, with only the best surviving. Maybe we should call it The Hunger Games :P
The Epic Double Decker-Double Down version of The A.F.T. Three chicken breasts and a whole lot of Cambozola wrapped, breaded and deep fried then tossed in buffalo wing sauce. Oh yes!
A.F.T. All Around
I have to start this post out with an apology to Ken. While the lateness of this post is apt considering the name of his feature, he deserves better. Well now that the A.F.T. has come and gone as our customer selected feature last week, I figured I might as well finally write a bit about it, since I thought it was a pretty solid one. While it was a simple concept with a simple execution, a Buffalo Chicken grilled cheese, I thought it was damn tasty. For this one we decided to go with a creamy Cambozola, Mesquite grilled chicken and Hot Sauce on Cayenne-Panko crusted French White. The Cayenne-Panko crust had the interesting effect of making the bread less crispy this time around, far different than the Panko-Parmesan crust on the Funghi which makes the grilled cheese even more crispy. The crust had a great flavour to it though, that contrasted well with the saltiness of the Cambozola.
What was even better about the feature was the ability to make a really awesome Epic version. We’ll call this one the Double Decker-Double Down. The awesomeness started with three chicken breasts surrounding a healthy amount of Cambozola. The stack of Chicken-Cheesy awesomeness was then wrapped in rice paper, egg washed and dredged in flour and the Cayenne-Panko crust. The whole thing was deep fried until nicely brown and then tossed in hot sauce, making one giant buffalo wing grilled cheese.
It was a great feature, it was a sick epic, it was about freakin’ time that Ken got to choose the feature, and geeze it was about $#@%in’ time I got this post out. Sorry Ken, I’ll make sure those awesome photos follow right away.
The Jack Hammer
Yeah, I know, its a boring title, but I couldn’t think of any jokes worthy, so I figured I might as well not try for fear of embarrassing myself. Well the Jack Hammer is the replacement Feature Grilled Cheese to the HotStepper and it follows it up quite well. While it’s not as in your face as the HotStepper was, the combination of flavours is awesome. It has a really great subtleness to it that you wouldn’t expect from the name. And if you notice it is once again on Panini Bianca. I really love this bread and am basically putting all of our Features on it in hopes that the bread will eventually make it onto the main menu. I’m glad that our Feature-selecting customers have been happy to indulge me in this way. Thanks go to Taylor for choosing a great grilled cheese.
The Jack Hammer, a not so subtle creation on Panini Bianca with Monterey Jack, Serrano Ham and Balsamic Reduction Caramelized Red Onions. This is a good one.
Another Week
It’s the beginning of another week and while it’s miserably cold outside, there are some great reasons to make the trek to The Construction Site for some great grilled cheese. Firstly we have our Monday student promotion with a classic grilled cheese, chips or salad and any Boylan’s vintage soda for $7 all-in. Not bad for those cash strapped students out there.
We also have a new feature in the offing. Saturday saw the Hotstepper step on out, with Taylor getting a shot at grilled cheese immortality. So far I’m liking where his head’s at, so I’m hoping we’ll get his feature going tomorrow. But I wanted to take this chance to thank Narbir for the Hotstepper, it was a great back to basics feature that I thought was stellar. Big shoes to fill Taylor, let’s see how you do.
Friday Twitter Contests
Probably a month or so ago I was a little bored one Friday morning and decided to play around with a little twitter contest. The idea of the contest was music trivia and to win you had to be the first one to get the correct song to play over grldRadio at our Yonge and Eglinton location. Well the response was relatively modest, but I was still amazed at how quickly the questions were answered. And well, it was just a whole lot of fun. So, I decided pretty quickly that I would make it a regular thing. I even told a few people to check for it the following week. Well, a month later and I’m finally going to get this Friday contest thing going, starting tomorrow (or today if you notice the time of this post).
For the first little bit I think we’ll stick to music trivia, because as I said it was a whole lot of fun (you really had to be in the store for it). I’m going to try to keep it at a regular time too. Right now I’m thinking 11am every Friday, so watch your twitter feed. The prizes won’t always be the same, but for tomorrow at least, they’ll be free grilled cheeses at our Yonge and Eglinton location. I’m pretty stoked for it, mainly because I think the songs I’ve chosen for the trivia are pretty awesome, but I hope you get excited for free grilled cheese too.
Our First Promotion
So today begins our first promotion. And like everything, we figured we might as well start small and see what happens. So this is a pretty focussed one. Every Monday until the end of April, anyone who comes into our Yonge and Eglinton location, that can show that they are a student, can get a Classic grilled cheese, with our chips or salad and a bottle of Boylan’s vintage soda for $7 all in. We figure this is a good way for students to start the week, get some great comfort food with an exceptional soda for a great price. So we’ll see what happens.
