Cravings: Grilled Cheese and Tomato Soup

The grilled cheese sandwich and tomato soup combo is a cheap and easy DeLorean ride back to childhood. Combine plastic cheese, white supermarket bread and a can of Campbell's and you're 8 years old again.

Faced with crappy weather and a city full of overgrown children, plenty of Portland eateries are cashing in by offering their own spin on a dish most Americans can make themselves before they can spell, gussying it up with some fancy cheese and a few fresh herbs, then slapping on a gourmet price tag. But is anywhere actually turning out a meal for which it's worth parting with the warmth of your own house—not to mention your cold hard cash?

I bravely faced the winter chills to find out.

Ruth's ranking system:

1 – Takes me back to college days, drunkenly assembling moldy leftovers on stale discount bread.

2 – Takes me back to my childhood. Mom would be proud.

3 – Takes me back to my fantasy childhood, where my mom's
cooking doesn't involve can openers or coupons.

4 – Takes me to a new plane of fatty, starchy bliss.

5 – Cheesus Christ.

GRILLED CHEESE GRILL

113 SE 28th Ave. and 1027 NE Alberta St.,206-8959, grilledcheesegrill.com.

This school-bus-cum-food-cart is probably best known for serving up calorific grilled cheese/hamburger hybrids to late-night revelers, but it also offers myriad variations on the classic soup-and-sandwich combination and is apparently open in daylight hours for sober consumption, too. Huh. I hit the newly opened Southeast location—this one has a double-decker bus—and ordered up "The Gabby" ($4.75), which comes with cheddar, Swiss, mozzarella and Colby Jack on Portland French Bakery white. This sandwich is so much more than the sum of its parts—a big, stretchy, gooey, multi-layered melted mess, oozing out between slices of obscenely buttery bread. God I wished I'd been drunk, and I mean that in the nicest possible way. This is what I want waiting at home when I stumble in the door at 3 am. I wish I could say the same about the soup—a small cup of canned with some onion and fresh tomato added in. It's too hot, too thin and no way worth the additional $2.50. Even drunk.

Rating: 3.5

308 SW Washington St., 295-2583, eatatblueplate.com.

This downtown diner makes its own sodas and proclaims itself to be "salt-of-the-earth," so I was expecting something huge and comforting, dripping with delicious dairy fattiness. But Blueplate's soup-and-sandwich pairing ($6) is a far more modest proposal—a fairly uninspiring sandwich, made with flat-tasting cheddar, and a mug of steaming tomato soup. The latter is pretty solid—rich and chunky and pleasingly heavy on the herbs—but the grilled cheese is as dull as a butter knife (ironically, it could have done with more butter). No one visits a soda fountain for a simple, healthy meal. Blueplate's epic frosted glasses overflowing with ice cream, syrup, soda and whipped cream deserve to be matched with something far more artery-clogging.

Rating: 2.5

THE COUNTRY CAT

7937 SE Stark St., 408-1414, thecountrycat.net.

Among rib-sticking, Southern-style goodies like chicken-fried steak and whiskey custard French toast on this Montavilla neighborhood favorite's brunch menu, it's hard to imagine anyone actually ordering the humble-sounding grilled cheese and smoked tomato soup ($9), but anyone who does is in for a happy, hearty surprise. The generous ramekin of soup is super savory, with a real, rustic smoky flavor. Bonus points for a nice plop of sour cream floating in the middle. It's matched with an equally impressive sandwich, composed of two huge slabs of buttery, dense, housemade potato bread held together with a mild, creamy ooze of cheese. Possibly a bit too mild—it completely disappears against such a bold soup—but on its own, it will make even your fried-bacon-ordering dining companions envious.

Rating: 4

BUNK BAR

1028 SE Water Ave., 894-9708.

It's already well established that Bunk Sandwiches—and its nocturnal offspring, Bunk Bar—serves up some of the best sandwiches in Portland, but its reputation is built on gut-busting hunks of saucy, sloppy meat. What happens when there's no animal protein to hide behind? The soup ($2) is, ironically, the best part: thick, creamy, slightly sweet and served with a good garnish of Parmesan and black pepper (it also pairs brilliantly with the bar's riff on a Michelada; just FYI). The bread is, as always, perfectly selected—big, thick, soft and well-toasted. But the sandwich itself ($5) is pretty underwhelming compared with Bunk's more notable creations—that plastic, orange glob of cheddar is starting to feel depressingly familiar by now. The soup is available as a side for any of the far more interesting sandwiches, so, y'know, do that.

Rating: 3.5

50 PLATES

333 NW 13th Ave., 228-5050, 50plates.com.

As far as I can tell, this is the most expensive version in the whole city. This Pearl District concept restaurant is a real-napkin-and-silverware kinda joint, and the "50/50" plate on its lunch menu will set you back a cool $10. The bread came with grilled cheese on the outside as well as inside, coating my entire face and hands in enough oil to endanger small penguins. Thank God for that fancy napkin. The cheese is a great aged cheddar, scattered with sun-dried tomatoes, but mine coagulated before I'd even hit the halfway mark, quickly turning from indulgently soft and gooey to greasy and blobby. The oversized mug of soup was incredibly unevenly heated—as if it had been reheated in a microwave—but the bits that weren't scoldingly hot were weirdly acidic.

Rating: 3

SAVOR SOUP HOUSE

1003 SW Alder St., 750-5634, savorsouphouse.com.

At $5.50 for a cup of soup and half a sandwich (plus extra bread and butter), this must be the best value combo in town. The housemade tomato soup from this tiny cart is so flavorful—full of fennel and orange and topped with Parmesan and herby croutons—it puts almost every sit-down establishment to shame. The standard grilled cheese features more of my old friend Tillamook cheddar (though you can add in everything from truffle oil to smoked bacon. I would humbly suggest some Gruyère), but it comes on Grand Central's fantastic, chewy Italian-style Como bread, which elevates it from just a dipping device into—dare I say it—an adult dish. The bigger problem is the lack of seating in or around this downtown cart pod. By the time I could sit down, the croutons had turned to mush and the sandwich was already getting cold. And that was on a dry day.

Rating: 3.5 (4 if you add Gruyère)

ELEPHANTS DELI

Multiple locations including 1812 SW Park Ave., 546-3166, elephantsdeli.com.

This long-standing lunchtime standby is already well-known for its excellent tomato orange soup—full of butter and cream with a subtle citrus tang, it's a thick, comforting winter bisque and my cup ($3 for a half-pint) was served up in seconds (with free crackers!) on my visit to the small downtown Fox Tower store. The grilled cheese was a different story. After several minutes, I was presented with a sad-looking sandwich squashed flat as cardboard, and with similar flavor and texture. Bland, butterless white bread cemented around a modest serving of cheddar, its sole redeeming quality was as a conduit for getting the soup into my gob, but I still threw it out after a few bites and just slurped straight from the cup instead.

Rating: 2

WWeek 2015