The following is part of a serialized story, Everyone Thinks I Dream of Chocolate. You can find the first chapter here.
At least, that is what Dick wanted to name the shop. The actual restaurant was just known as the “Grilled Cheese Grille” but most people simply called it “that Grilled Cheese Place” or simply “the Grille”.
The original menu only had 6 sandwiches. By the time I arrived, the menu contained 13 sandwiches when I started working there along with a bunch of side options. The original 6 are considered staples.
The 1st on the list was your classic grilled cheese and as the list goes on, there are variations like adding jalapeno peppers or onion, tomato, and spinach. As the list went further down, they become suspiciously more like traditional sandwiches. Reubans, roast beef, chicken salad. The twist is they all had cheese in them. A customer once pointed this out saying that it disqualified these sandwiches from being Grilled Cheeses.
“A grilled cheese is just cheese,” they said.
“Who gives a shit,” Dick said. “It’s grilled and it’s got cheese in it.”
The customer argued the point for a while but I never understood why they were so serious about the subject. It’s a fucking sandwich.
In contrast to the Chocolate Shop that Dick and Lou owned 6 feet away, the Grille was more function than fashion. There were no decorations for most of the year. In fact, they didn’t get an official sign to hang up until a year after I started working there.
It was designed to be a deli of sorts. The open workspace was surrounded by an L-shaped counter that wrapped around sizable square footage. The space started with the refrigerated deli case that we used to store completed chocolate products. Next to that was the front counter for customers. At the Bend of the “L”, was a stainless steel counter behind a glass wall that went up to people’s necks. Here, customers could see someone actually make the chocolate while still keeping their germs shielded from the product. The other side of the “L” was the ice cream case, surprisingly popular all year round.
Behind the outer counter were more counters and stainless steel work tables. There were a variety of miscellaneous things: cash register, pens, sticky notes, straws, coffee, soda machine, utensils, disposable cups, etc.
Next to the deli case was a door that led into the kitchen. The layout was like a snake, going in through the mouth, you could see the order counter on your right and through it the kitchen stove and sandwich station. To get there, you had to walk all the way to the end of the kitchen then turn twice to the right around the partition. At this middle point, there was a back door that led directly into the eating area (kind of the butthole in this whole snake metaphor). Walk past the cooking area and it would lead into the back supply closet, then past Dick’s office until finally you got to the walk-in freezer.
One would think that it would be filled with sandwich-making stuff. However, most of that was relegated to the sandwich-making station, the equivalent of a person sticking all of their office supplies in a single desk. Most of the place was dedicated to chocolate. The walls were lined with metal shelves filled with different-sized pots, pans, baking trays, forks, knives, glass pitchers, and kabob sticks. Then, there were specialty tools: tempering machines, mixing bowls, molding trays, and the guitar.
In the back supply cabinet were different cookies and snacks to dip, various alcohols (for flavor, not recreation), spices, and sea salts.
Based on the vast disproportion of priorities given to the two businesses, I initially thought the Grilled Cheese Shop was a front.
One day, I asked Dick, “So is the Grilled Cheese like a side business?”
“Kind of. Our original kitchen got flooded out.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah, the kitchen used to be on Main Street but after the flood, we had to find a new kitchen. We already had a second shop here and the owner of the Mill asked if we wanted to use this kitchen.”
“I guess it all worked out.”
“Yeah, but the catch was that we needed to make some kind of food like an actual restaurant. So we picked grilled cheese because it’s the easiest thing to fucking make.”
Before Dick and Lou took the spot, the restaurant’s location was considered by some to be cursed because no business lasted longer than a year. Before it served grilled cheese, it was a burger joint (with a liquor license), a Mediterranean place, and an actual deli with actual sandwiches.
The burger joint had been the most successful, even coming close to getting a liquor license before they ultimately closed up. Some of the other shop owners said that it used to be incredibly busy but it wasn’t enough to keep them afloat. Like the rest of the Mill, business only seemed to get slower with each new owner.
Not that this was an issue for Dick and Lou. For them, chocolate was their main game and they were at the top of it. After 20 years of business, they had an established customer base with a reputation for having the best artisan chocolate. Main Street, despite its flooding, was still popular for business. Online shipping also made it possible for them to sell anywhere around the world. The grilled cheese was simply a means to an end, a reason to use the kitchen. In that regard, the grilled cheese was a front, just not a criminal one.
Still, Dick and Lou were forced to run two businesses. One that they had dedicated two decades to build, perfect, and honor. The other was like a child that the mother had dumped on a relative’s doorstep. Raising it was an obligation, strain, and burden.
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9. Learning Curve
Danger Wonka 