April 12: The Great Northwest Soup Company

My social media stream was full of #NationalGrilledCheeseDay posts this morning, which gave me a craving. So, internet, where's the best grilled cheese in Seattle? The consensus seems to be the Cheese Wizards food truck, which was in Bellevue, so that's no help. The runner up is Beechers, which I found to be disappointing last October. Ballard and Capitol Hill have a few spots, but the former is too far and I just don't feel like taking the light rail and wandering the Hill. Surprisingly, no recommendations for Grand Central Bakery, which I avoid because it's an expensive place with long lines.

That leaves The Great Northwest Soup Company. Confusingly, their website lists locations on Eastlake and Westlake, but the recommendations I saw were for their hole-in-the-wall location in Puget Sound Plaza, right above the University Street bus tunnel station, and across the street from Seattle's best cheesesteaks at Calozzi's.

The line's a bit long, which gives me time to look at the menu. There's ten soups on the menu, several cold sandwiches, and two hot sandwiches, one of which is a Spanish grilled cheese, with chipotle aioli. Sounded good. I ordered combo number 1, a whole grilled cheese and an 8 ounce tomato basil soup. How could someone get a grilled cheese and not get tomato soup? Anything else would just be wrong. I also grabbed a glass-bottle Coke from the cooler. They struggle for a moment to find a bottle opener, but the cook has a well-loved one on his keychain, which opens the bottle after a few attempts.

My order's up a few minutes later. Seating is virtually non-existent. Three fixed stools are in the each corner of the building lobby, and a few metal tables are outside in the rain. I'm lucky enough to get a stool and dig in.

The cheese is a white and yellow blend, probably cheddar, swiss, maybe colby and provalone? Their web site mentions an eight-cheese blend, which seems like overkill, but it was mild and smooth. The oozy strings of cheese between the sandwich halves snapped off at just the right distance, and the sourdough bread didn't suffer the flavor of burnt grill scrapings like I had at Beechers. The bread was, perhaps, just slightly underdone, more spongy than crisp, but not really bad at all -- just 15 more seconds on the grill would have made it a tiny bit better.

Most bites of the sandwich made a visit into the soup before I ate it, the way it should be. The soup was thick, almost a tomato cream, with confetti-sized lumps of creaminess. The basil is subtle, nothing like the overpowering spaghetti sauce I bought a few weeks ago (Paul Newman, your food is disappoint). Once the sandwich is gone, I spoon out the rest. Really, really good.

Wait a second. Chipotle aioli? Where was that? Turns out the Spanish grilled cheese was different than the combo grilled cheese. But I didn't miss it at all. The best grilled cheese in downtown Seattle? Found it.

The Great Northwest Soup Company
1323 4th Ave, in the Puget Sound Plaza
Grilled cheese, tomato basil soup, Coke, $12.09