food trucks! roxy's grilled cheese

James, Mike and Marc

Little compares to biting into a grilled cheese sandwich. The perfectly grilled, crispy crust, the deliciously melting vegan cheese, the sweet ripe heirloom tomatoes -- it all comes together as a juicy mess that you can't wait to gobble all up.

The folks at Roxy's Grilled Cheese food truck from Boston know this and capitalize on it. They entered the contest on The Great Food Truck Race  in Season 2 and left in Week 6, despite having won that week's Truck Stop which gave them $1000 advantage in the final tally. Moral of this story is that grilled cheese might be all that and a bag of rocks, but it isn't perfect unless it's vegan. Unfortunately, this lesson fell on deaf ears because Roxy's still hasn't converted to - or even offer!-  vegan cheese. 

Perhaps this'll help: my Heirloom Tomato and Kale Grilled Vegan Cheese Sandwich.

Roxy's carries their own version of it, the Rookie Melt. Rookie?? Maybe they can rename it Veteran Melt if they use my recipe, utilizing farm fresh heirloom tomatoes and vegan cheese.

I used Daiya jack-style cheese and swiss-style cheese for my melt. The sandwich needs a bit of heat, which is perfectly contributed by the jack. I used three different versions of tomatoes and grilled sourdough bread. I added some kale for health, wealth and color. OK, not for wealth. But it made me feel wealthy!

The key to perfectly melted grilled cheese is low heat and a lid toward the end. Covering the skillet with a lid allows the cheese to perfectly melt and the bread to attain amazing crispness. And unless you like warm tomato slices, add them toward the end of the cooking time, right before you introduce bread slice 1 to bread slice 2.