Leave it to Jeremy Zabel to list a grilled cheese sandwich on his modestly upscale menu—and to stuff it with smoked pork, runny French cheese and tangy barbecue sauce.
“I tend to do stuff like that,” the chef of Kelseyville”s The Saw Shop said with a laugh.
Just the mention of the mundane American classic, the fall back sandwich of harried baby boom moms, is enough to catch your attention. Granted, the combination of cheese and bread has been around for centuries. The croque monsieur has been a staple at Paris cafes since the days of Toulouse Lautrec. But most of us know it as the lunch counter quickie: processed orange grocery store goo cementing two pieces of generic toasted white bread, paired with Campbell”s tomato soup.
It is difficult, in other words, to imagine the grilled cheese sandwich without names like Kraft and Wonder Bread coming to mind.
Yet few sandwiches evoke such mystic chords of memory. Unlike the other great sandwiches in the American pantheon—bacon, lettuce and tomato, turkey club—it conjures warm, nostalgic thoughts of childhood.
“It”s comforting,” Zabel explained. “Mom comes out with the grilled cheese—we all grew up with it.”
The version he serves at The Saw Shop, however, represents quite a departure from the all-American norm. He starts by smoking pork for half a day then dousing substantial slices of the meat in a sweet-tart sauce similar to that found on countless mounds of Carolina barbecue. And instead of vague cheddar or bland American cheese, he coats the bread with Fromage a Raclette, a nutty, creamy, inscrutable product of the French Alps.
The result is stunning—or at least as impressive as a sandwich of common pedigree can be.
It starts off very much like a good pulled pork. But soon the earthy, mildly pungent taint of the Raclette tames the rush of sweet vinegar, hauling it down to ground level, allowing the meat to show off its smoky side. Each element of the sandwich elbows its way to the front before you realize the subtle balance of flavors.
It”s a remarkable achievement in a simple package.
“I like to keep everyone comfortable, yet get them outside of their box,” Zabel said. “Sometimes when you pique a person”s interest they want to give it another shot.”
The inclusion of Raclette—not to be confused with the Swiss fondue dish of the same name—makes the sandwich unique. It is not a cheese normally stocked on grocery shelves or carted in Sysco trucks. Indeed, Zabel first encountered it at a San Francisco festival devoted to cheese.
“I tried it and I immediately wanted to find something to do with it,” he recalled. “It”s like no other cheese.”
Zabel tested several other options before settling on smoked pork and soothing French curd. He remains partial to a sandwich composed of rich prime rib slices countered by the slap of sharp cheddar. In the fall he may swap out the pork for fresh fruit jam.
“We play around with it,” he said of each new idea, gesturing toward The Saw Shop”s kitchen. “We eat a lot back there.”
The grilled cheese sandwich has been on the restaurant menu for a month. Although intended as a temporary feature item, Zabel now plans to keep it around. And why not? After all, there”s something of innocent fun, of youthful pleasure, especially in a scaled up version.
Contact Dave Faries at 900-2016
