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Welcome to Haute-N-Ready, in which John Locanthi, Willamette Week's trencherman of leisure, tastes the hastily made, modestly priced food of the common man.
With all due respect to Burgerville and Taco Time, Starbucks is the Pacific Northwest's biggest contribution to contemporary fast food. It may not look like a fast food chain on the exterior. It certainly doesn't present itself as one either. But upon closer inspection, the house coffee is definitely what you'd expect from a McDonald's drive-thru on your commute to work. Frappuccinos are little more than bougie Blizzards with a little coffee mixed in. And beyond all that, Starbucks has more locations than any other national fast food chain. But that doesn't mean this coffee shack has forgotten its roots: Starbucks has just now released its Pacific Northwest and NYC-exclusive Beecher's Handmade Grilled Cheese on Brioche.
Like the PB&J and macaroni & cheese, the grilled cheese is one of those comfort foods being rediscovered by food artisans. What began as a utilitarian sandwich created to provide sustenance for people who couldn't afford meat has expanded from American cheese product placed in-between two slices of Wonderbread to now include every cheese and bread imaginable.
I never much cared for grilled cheese growing up but that was largely due to the Kraft-focused norm. Gouda? Manchego? Smoked gouda? These exciting, seemingly endless possibilities have changed the game, opening up whole new worlds for discovery.
Out of all of these options, Starbucks went with jack cheese to try to tap into this market. On slices of brioche to stay as on trend as Wendy's. Jack is a perfectly fine cheese, mind you—pepper jack remains infinitely superior—but it is less-than-exciting. It's a lot of artisanal-sounding gobbledygook to sell a bland product. In other words, the new sandwich is perfectly on-brand for Starbucks. And so, your humble narrator walked past the neighborhood coffee shop and into Starbucks to investigate it further.
The deli counter next to the register remains something of a mystery. We see it, but we never really acknowledge it outside of the occasional desire for a chonga bagel. It's expanded a bit. There's the standard coffee shop fare, but there's also a growing array of paninis and breakfast sandwiches with cage-free eggs that look and feel like goods Starbucks stole in a daring heist of Panera truck. There are also these things called cake pops. I ordered a chocolate chip cookie dough cake pop ($1.95) to go with my grilled cheese ($5.45) and a venti black coffee ($2.45).
The grilled cheese was toasted, but only enough to brown a small portion of the middle. The brioche bread was crisp enough to hold its shape and too soft to provide any sort of crunch. I've never had brioche that looked like sandwich bread before this. It was somewhat sweet and buttery but only a fraction as much as say Wendy's brioche burger buns. The Beecher's Just Jack cheese was, well, jack cheese. (Cheese aficionados might be able to tell the subtle differences between Beecher's and the non-handmade competition, but I am at a loss.) Jack cheese, bread and butter is a simple, perfectly functional, if bland combination and this Starbucks grilled cheese didn't screw it up. There are plenty of other types of cheese I would have gone with, but jack is a good deal better than American. There are also plenty of ways to eat a serviceable grilled cheese that don't involve spending $5.45.
As for the cake pop, if you've ever had a desire to bite into a ball of cookie dough with chocolate chips, these are one way to do it. It's good is what I'm saying. I kind of wish I was eating one right now.
Starbucks takes a whipping in this town, often deservedly so. Portland has an indecently vibrant coffee scene. I'm typing this as I'm getting small chunks of what I assume are coffee grounds in my mouth while I try to drink this house blend. It's not good. But instead of piling on, I'd like to say that this grilled cheese is a step in the right direction. Switch the jack to pepper jack and drop a dollar or two off the price and I might add Starbucks to the official Haute-N-Ready snack list. The trick to enjoying Starbucks is to think of it as less a coffee shop and more of a fast casual McCafe.
Willamette Week