I’ve always been a grilled cheese person. Growing up, I would eat my grandmother’s incredible grilled cheese at least four times a week. By the time I was in middle school, I was a grilled cheese master myself. When I came to Duke, I heard lots of debate over which grilled cheese was best – Pitch or Divinity Cafe. Considering myself an (unofficial) grilled cheese expert, I decided to settle the question of grilled cheese dominance once and for all. For all you grilled cheese lovers out there (or Team Pitch people who just want to prove a point), here’s a definitive ranking of the all the grilled cheese sandwiches at Duke from worst to best.
6. Au Bon Pain
If you a) have taste buds and b) appreciate a good grilled cheese sandwich, I would advise you to skip ABP. Granted, it’s cheap and fast, but neither of those things are worth sacrificing taste for. Toasted cheese would be a more accurate name for this considering that it is bread with cheese that was melted in a toaster oven. There is an option that comes with tomato and bacon, but no amount of extras can save this sad sandwich. I’m sorry, ABP, you know I love you, but please just stick to salads, wraps and breakfast sandwiches in the future.
5. Devil’s Krafthouse
Calling the Krafthouse sandwich a grilled cheese sandwich is a bit of false advertising. First off, it’s made with pimento cheese. Additionally, the bread feels like it’s been in a toaster for a few seconds too long – harder and crunchier than you want for your grilled cheese. If you remove the “grilled cheese” label on it and call it like it is (pimento cheese sandwich) then you have a pretty good sandwich on your hands. The pimento cheese is tasty and has a nice spicy kick to it and the bacon and tomato add even more flavor. Its more expensive than some of the other options ($10), but includes a side of their incredible fries. Overall, this sandwich was a strong “okay” for me, and there are better things you can eat at the Krafthouse, for sure.
4. Sprout
Sprout had a lot of potential for me. Grilled cheese that was at least somewhat healthy? Seemed too good to be true, and it was. My first issue with this sandwich occurred before I even bit into it: it took 15 minutes to make even though I was the only person at Sprout. Wait time aside, it was a mediocre grilled cheese. Sprout attempted to spice things up with multiple types of cheese, pesto, and tomatoes, but as a grilled cheese purist, these additions didn’t thrill me. The bread maintained that perfect balance between crispy yet soft, but it was too thin and I felt like I was just eating straight melted cheese. That being said, it’s a new menu item so they’re still working out the kinks. I can honestly say I haven’t quite given up on Sprout yet.
3. Cafe DeNovo (Law School)
The grilled cheese from the Law School cafe, Cafe DeNovo was the total dark horse of this contest. Up until my “research,” I hadn’t even heard that you could buy grilled cheese at the Cafe DeNovo. Given its lack of campus fame, I wasn’t expecting much when I made the long trek down Towerview. I’m happy to say that I was pleasantly surprised. Law School grilled cheese was fast. It was cheap. It came with a side. Most of all, it was delicious. The bread was nicely browned without being dried out and their cheese blend was melted to perfection. It was, by all accounts, a perfect grilled cheese sandwich. It just might be worth pulling an Elle Woods and applying to Duke Law School just for it. However, for now it was just too out of the way to merit the coveted number #1 ranking.
2. Divinity Cafe
There is a strong contingent of Duke students who will wholeheartedly disagree with me and might even boycott the rest of my articles for saying this, but Div School grilled cheese is only the second-best grilled cheese on campus. Here’s why: it’s not made fresh to order. Some days you luck out and get a sandwich hot off the griddle, but some days you get the sandwich that has been sitting in the serving dish for so long that the cheese has solidified into plastic. Sure, it’s still a delicious sandwich with its two different cheeses and buttery bread, and it will probably change your college dining experience if you eat it with tomato soup, but it lacks the consistency that you find in our #1 sandwich.
#Spoon tip: You can special order vegan grilled cheese here if you’re into that. This writer is unclear what one would use in lieu of cheese, but whatever it is can’t be worse than a life without grilled cheese.
1. Pitchforks
In the end, it wasn’t even a close contest as to who was going to claim the top spot on this list — there are so many things that make Pitchforks grilled cheese the superior sandwich. For starters, it is always cooked to perfection with thick, crispy bread, and tons of molten cheese. I don’t know what sort of magic the chefs do back there, but I have never left Pitch unsatisfied after ordering grilled cheese. Second, it’s customizable. You can load up your grilled cheese with everything from classic tomato to even apple slices. Like all the best guilty pleasure foods, it is cheap and, unless you go at a wildly popular time, incredibly fast. Not to mention that it’s available to you 24/7. Plus, it gives you an excuse to eat Pitchforks french fries and that’s never a bad thing.
Duke has some seriously good food, not the least of which is its grilled cheese. See you all in the 2 a.m. Pitch line.