Field Report: Seattle - Beecher's Handmade Cheese and Icon Bar and Grill

That's right!  Once again I've managed to squeeze two field reports into my out of town adventure :-)  I was in Seattle for work and decided to hit up a spot that I had already visited during my last Seattle adventure (alas this was pre-blog, so it didn't get a full on review), Beecher's Handmade Cheese.  It's located right across from Pike's Place Market, which makes it a fun place to venture to!

One of the coolest things about Beecher's is that they make their signature cheeses in house!  So while you're eating you can try to snag one of the few seats (made of milk jugs) to watch the cheese making action.

Luckily a pane of glass shields you from any flying curds coming your way!  They're actually best known for their "World's Best Mac and Cheese" (I believe this title was bestowed by Oprah, so take it or leave it), but that doesn't mean their signature cheese isn't delicious enough on its own.

OK, I think I've adequately set the scene.  On to the good stuff!

The menu is seen above.  Last time I was here I tried the Flagship Sandwich, but I thought for this visit it would be best to let the cheese speak for itself, so I opted for the standard Grilled Cheese.

They grilled it right up and soon I was ready to roll!

As you can see from the picture, it was pretty straightforward.  When I first pulled the sandwich apart I was excited by how gooey it looked!  The bread was particularly crunchy and toast-like, but it turns out that there wasn't enough cheese to balance out the crunchy bread.  Maybe I've just gotten spoiled by all the deluxe grilled cheeses I've been making with all sorts of additional ingredients, but this seemed a little too simple.  From what I remember of my sandwich from the first time I visited Beecher's, it was really tasty.  So maybe this was just too basic for my current tastes?

This is the Flagship Sandwich from my first visit.

As for the actual tastes, the cheese seemed mild at first, but that might've just been because there wasn't a lot of it in relation to the bread.  I found that the more I ate the more I noticed that sort of twinge in the back of my mouth like you get when you taste something sharp.  I think this was a good simple but high quality sandwich (per the delicious made-in house cheese being the central ingredient).  I've just gotten used to gooey, over the top creations, but this should be appreciated for its classic simplicity.

As an aside, the person I was with got the signature mac and cheese and was kind enough to let me taste.  It was DECADENT!  That definitely had the full rich cheesy flavor that I was expecting.  It was too rich to eat too much, but was an awesome treat!

My next stop was a place across the street from my hotel that I never would've noticed had it not been for one of my co-workers pointing it out and telling me that she saw an "Ultimate Grilled Cheese" on their menu that I needed to go try!  So for dinner that night, off I went.  The Ultimate Grilled Cheese is described as follows:

Ultimate Grilled Cheese Sandwich: Fontina, cheddar, Gruyere and herb goat cheese toasted on sourdough bread with fresh arugula. Served with your choice of sides.

Yum!  Lots of cheeses all of which I like!  And lucky for me, despite the fact that this is listed as a lunch special, the restaurant agreed to give it to me for dinner :-)  I wasn't particularly wowed by the presentation-- I mostly saw the arugula and no gooey cheese oozing out.  Oh well, looks aren't everything, right?

Only taste would tell the true merits of this one.  The bread was perfectly crunchy!  Not too thick, just the right level of brown, and you can't really go wrong with sourdough!  Sadly, even with this many cheeses, you apparently CAN go wrong with the filling :-(  The first bite was much more bitter than I was expecting-- the goat cheese and arugula combined to be very bitter.  I thought as I went on I would start to taste the other cheeses more-- and I definitely could tell they were there, but only because they made the sandwich chewy, not because of their taste.  Since the goat cheese was made more bitter by the arugula the sandwich actually bordered on bland-- it was only when I got little taste snippets of the other cheeses that I got a feel for the fuller flavor.

Apologies for how graphic this photo looks, but my bright flash + dim restaurant lighting = not attractive photo.

I guess goat cheese is just a hard flavor to overcome, even with a combination of three other cheeses.  Luckily I like goat cheese, so once I accepted that this was basically a goat cheese grilled cheese I was fine, but I would be wary of someone choosing this sandwich for its diverse assortment of cheese and only tasting goat cheese.

Anyway, it was a mixed bag in Seattle-- Beecher's showed me that simplicity can be just what the doctor ordered and Icon showed me that overloading on cheese isn't always a recipe for success.  If only I were willing to pay the money to have some flagship cheese mailed out to me to experiment with-- now that could be awesome :-)

Now that I'm back I'm ready to resume my grilled cheesin'.  I've got a quesadilla on tap for this week, so stay tuned!