Who Moved My Grilled Cheese?

This is the spot outside Borough Market where Bill Oglethorpe of Neal’s Yard Dairy usually toasts his signature sandwiches—mounds of Montgomery cheddar and onions barely contained within thick, buttered slices of Poilâne sourdough, pressed until molten, then tucked in a simple paper napkin and delivered into your hands.  This is not the kind of sandwich you wander around the Market with.  No, it demands your full attention, so you claim a nearby stoop and concentrate on each bite, finishing it before someone forces you off that stoop.  During her visit to London last year, Ruth Reichl of Gourmet Magazine had one sandwich—and another—then proclaimed it “the Platonic ideal of grilled cheese.”  A stream of devotees followed soon after, with queues snaking past nearby Monmouth Coffee Company.

But these days you’ll find no sign of Bill or his famous creation.  I know, because a few Saturdays ago I woke up with visions of grilled cheese dancing in my head but was rudely frozen in my hurried tracks when I saw that Bill’s faithful presence was no longer.  I immediately went inside the shop and, as if I had lost a small child, pleaded with a cheesemonger for the whereabouts of my sandwich.  Was Bill on a well-deserved break?  Had he decided to take his stall on the road?  Worse.  He had been kicked out by the council for illegal street trading.  I had been eating illicit cheese!  The thought of it made me want it so much more.

The cheesemonger clearly did not comprehend my panic.  Instead of engaging with me in joint grilled-cheese mourning and detective work, he decided to return to his task of handing out samples of Brie de Meaux. Pah.  I pushed my way past the tourists ogling oat cakes and tapped the guy with the Stinking Bishop.  Now I was getting somewhere.  Bill would return, I was told, with a sanctioned stall inside the market!  When?  Sometime in June. 

I’ve been on to them by phone every week since (going to the Market, sans grilled cheese, would simply be too painful).  And—NEWS FLASH!— having spoken with them again just now, can report that the elusive sometime in June is this very Saturday the 17th!  Bill will be in the Green Market from 9am to 4pm, with prices staying the same at £3 a sandwich.  I couldn’t get an exact location for the new stall, because apparently even Bill doesn’t know it yet!   I told you this was breaking news.

The secrecy makes me a little worried; but it does give it all the hallmarks of a fabulous debut, one you can’t risk missing. So, get thee to the market this Saturday.  Look for Bill's new stall.  And, if you happen to see a rather excited and impatient someone with a camera in one hand and £3 ready in the other, say hello.  Then please excuse me while I go find my stoop.

Borough Market is at 8 Southwark Street, just opposite the south side of London Bridge Station, SE1.  But you already knew that.

Comments

[JRob]

AHAHAAAA. (Sorry, the title feels like a personal joke.) But hooray that you tracked down the elusive, illegal sandwich king. As if the cheese itself weren't illicit enough.

[randy]

ooooh. next time i',m in town, can we go for one of these?

[Jess]

randy, we can go for one or three...when is next time?

did you make off with my manchego, jamie? or perhaps you hid my hallumi? kidnap my camembert? please, please remind me of some more!

[JRob]

Did you hijack my Monterey Jack? Did you mooch my mozzarella? Did you fleech my feta? (I gotta million of 'em...)