Little Muenster Visited 2/9/2012 3 Forks

Little Muenster 100 Stanton St., (between Ludlow St & Orchard St), Manhattan, NY 10002

Fancy grilled cheese seems to have exploded on to the scene recently from restaurants to food trucks.  But I actually hadn't really been to one so I was pretty excited to try out Little Muenster with some friends/co-workers of mine.  While I do love a good grilled cheese (let's be honest, who doesn't?!), I do have this inherent issue with places that charge a 300% mark-up on something you can essentially make at home.  But hey, it's not like having a $10 grilled cheese is going to break the bank, so I wasn't going to let that stop me from going there.   The place has a cute storefront but is not really a restaurant..it's more of a take out place that happens to have about 5 tables in the front. 

They have about 8 different kinds of grilled cheese and they are pretty creative with the combinations.  They do have your standard grilled cheese with american cheese, tomato and bacon, but then they have combinations like asiago, parmesan, butternut squash and brown butter or the special sandwich had shrimp in it.  I opted for the taleggio, fontina, and sauteed crimini and shitake mushrooms ($9.25).  The meal comes with a side of BBQ flavored chips (they were almost like sweet potato chips).  I was super tempted to get the tomato soup but figured the chips might be just enough.

I did see the guy in back making the sandwiches and frankly it's just him putting the ingredients together and putting it in a KitchenAid sandwich press.  But I guess what else did you expect?  The sandwiches came out in these cute little bento boxes with the sandwich on one side and the chips in another.  The bread was one of those crusty almost baguette types of bread (not your standard Wonder Bread) but it was toasted just right with lots of crunch on the outside.  I did like my cheese and mushroom combination but my one complaint was that I thought the mushrooms were too salty.  I must have downed my cup of water in 5 minutes and while I liked the taleggio and fontina cheese, it just didn't have the same kind of super ooey gooey melt of american cheese, which is really the best part of a grilled cheese!  I noticed as I was leaving that they had bone marrow butter for $1 extra.  So the next time I'm here (it's in a great spot in the LES), I think I'll try the tomato soup and add bone marrow butter to what ever sandwich I get.  I can see this place getting mobbed at night with the drunk crowd so go earlier in the night if you don't want to get caught up in that!

Photo Credit: Yelp