GRILLED CHEESE is melting hearts and heating up appetites

Bernard Sidhom’s reasons for opening a grilled cheese restaurant in Ottawa were simple and specific. “In my younger days,” (note that he’s now all of 25), “when I’d go out, at 2 or 3 in the morning, all you could find open was shawarma places and pizza places.”

What he wanted was a grilled cheese sandwich. It seems that he’s not alone in that 3 a.m. urge. His new restaurant Melt Gourmet Grilled Cheese, on Dalhousie just south of Rideau, often has lineups around the block at 3 and 4 a.m.

Grilled cheese, that taste of comfort and home, is stepping out.

In Hamilton, Graeme Smith has sold some 35,000 grilled cheese sandwiches over the last year from his Gorilla Cheese truck. “The bottom line is, everybody loves grilled cheese,” says the former steelworker.

In October, cookbook author Alison Lewis, came out with 150 Grilled Cheese Sandwiches, a cookbook devoted solely to grilled cheese. “We just knew that grilled cheese was becoming such a hot trend,” says Lewis, who is based in Alabama but whose book was published by Canadian company Robert Rose.

The New York Times, in a recent review of that city’s myriad new grilled-cheese shops and trucks, called artisanal grilled cheese “a culinary sub-genre that has boomed in the last year.”

As grilled cheese has gone uptown, its flavours have gone far beyond white bread and Kraft slices.

New York City’s Morris Grilled Cheese Truck sells a grilled sandwich with truffle butter, truffle cheese and caramelized shallots.

Smith’s Gorilla Cheese makes a summer confection called the Neapolitan with fresh strawberries, Nutella, marshmallow spread and mascarpone cheese all warm and oozing between pieces of cinnamon-raisin bread.

Last summer at Toronto’s CNE, a sandwich called Niagara Gold Crunch, with Niagara Gold cheese, shaved prosciutto, fresh thyme and baby arugula, won as the best grilled cheese sandwich in the country in a contest put on by the Dairy Farmers of Canada.

In Canada, grilled cheese with bacon seems to have a particular pull.

“If you build it with bacon, they will come,” says Smith. “Our most popular sandwich, by far, is The Lumberjack, which has aged cheddar, bacon, Granny Smith apples and Canadian maple syrup, on white bread.”

While his other 17 flavours vie for most popular during the day, Sidhom says “at 4 a.m. people order bacon like crazy” and his Canadian Eh?, made with cheddar, apple-wood smoked bacon and house-made bacon bits, is in top demand.

Sidhom, who plans to open a second restaurant soon in Gatineau’s Promenade du Portage and who hopes to roll out a grilled cheese food truck, says a personal favourite is his Campfire, which includes Nutella, marshmallow spread and crumbled graham cookies, all grilled between pieces of buttered bread.

“My parents came from Egypt and I never went camping as a kid, so I felt that this was something that was missing in my life.”

Vanessa Simmons, a cheese sommelier with Ottawa’s Savvy Company, makes the case for seeking out locally made cheeses for great grilled cheese sandwiches.

“You want the cheese to shine. It has to be robust enough to stand up to the other ingredients. We make cheeses here in the Ottawa area that rival cheeses around the world.”

Simmons says that as the grilled cheese trend grows, “people are getting more experimental and trying new combinations while supporting their local producers.”

Lewis, the grilled-cheese cookbook author, notes that as she travels across North America, “I notice that in restaurants, whether they are gourmet or casual, increasingly there seems to be grilled cheese on the menu.”

For home cooks, she says that if you have access to a farmers’ market, you can easily make the most outstanding grilled cheese sandwiches.

“Go for the best, the freshest ingredients possible,” says Lewis, who says one of her favourite grilled cheese sandwiches includes fresh peach slices, brie and honey. “Get the highest quality cheese, the freshest bread and produce at its peak.”

But while fancy grilled cheese is growing, it seems that the recent trend is still rooted in something more basic.

Sidhom says that while he came up with his inventive grilled cheese menu with the help of a Cordon Bleu chef, “believe it or not, the one I have the most is The Classic” — just bread, butter and cheese cooked on the flat top.

Lewis, the author of 150 grilled cheese recipes, admits that when her 15-year-old son comes home from school every day, “he makes a grilled cheese with wheat bread and sharp Cheddar, cooked in a skillet.”

About the Original Grilled Cheese served at Lexington Avenue’s Melt Shop, The New York Times’ Ligaya Mishan wrote: “It is as you recall: a suburban childhood distilled. Lunch in front of the TV. Soggy bread, cheese the texture of candle drippings. It is terrible, but you will eat every bite.”

Simmons, the Ottawa cheese sommelier, is 40 and has travelled the world researching the best cheeses, but she says even now, “when I’m sick or in need of a little TLC, my mom comes over to our house and makes me the classic grilled cheese.

“It has nothing to do with grilled cheese and everything to do with feeling nurtured and loved.”