My best friend and I were on the hunt to find the best grilled cheese sandwich in New York City. Lucky for us, NYC did not disappoint.
Will Varner / BuzzFeed
Grilled cheese is the bridge between picky eaters and everyone else. It's on nearly every menu, and even if it isn't, it includes simple enough ingredients that essentially any restaurant could make it. (Although a few difficult restaurants that shall not be named have refused to make them for me before. One of them may or may not have been the IHOP on 6th Avenue after midnight.)
It isn't just my favorite food; it's also one of the only foods I thoroughly enjoy eating on a regular basis. As an extremely picky eater, I find a strong sense of comfort in grilled cheese because I know I can always rely on it to taste delicious, familiar, and safe. Not only can I order it anywhere, but it's also easy to make. I can't cook, and it's the only thing I know will be consistently enjoyable.
I've had grilled cheese sandwiches on dates, at work, family dinners, drunk late at night, and sometimes even for breakfast. I was making a grilled cheese sandwich when I found out my great-uncle died, and I was also making a grilled cheese when I found out I got into college. It's more than just a comfort food; after our 25-year relationship, it's a part of me.
Since this is my first year living in New York City, I wanted to get my lay of the land and scope out some of the best grilled cheese sandwiches I could find. I enlisted my best friend and fellow cheese-lover Molly, did some basic research (thanks Google, Yelp, Thrillist, and Gothamist), and created a master list for the most epic Grilled Cheese Crawl New York has ever seen.
Before we start our journey.
Krystie Yandoli / BuzzFeed
Our goal: To find the most delicious and "classic" grilled cheese sandwich in New York City. For our purposes, we defined classic grilled cheese as the most common and traditional form of the sandwich: melted cheese on simple but delicious bread without any add-ins. (If I wanted something fancy, I'd be looking for the best sandwich in general, but I wanted something as close to a classic grilled cheese sandwich as I could get.)
We rated each spot on a scale of 1-10 based on the bread and cheese in the sandwich, the restaurant's atmosphere, and how much we liked our experience overall.
