Having been traumatised by some horrible attempts-atcooking ranging from burnt utensils to mild food poisoning.
Having been traumatised by some horrible attempts-atcooking ranging from burnt utensils to mild food poisoning.
I’ve come to rely on the toasted cheese sandwich as the perfect default meal when all else fails. Living alone has only intensified that reliance on the toasted cheese as a staple diet with hot, cheap and edible being the only boxes that need to be checked when searching for a quick meal.
Most restaurants and takeaways in Grahamstown offer a decent sandwich which made choosing the perfect toasted cheese near impossible, so I decided to use the all-important criteria most students use to narrow down the options.
Taking into consideration price, hassle and, of course, how appetising the meal was, I managed to find three contenders, all under R15, for the city’s best (and most practical) toasted cheese sandwiches.
The Juice Bar (R14) Fortunately I visited on one of The Juice Bar’s less busy days and the sandwich took a little over seven minutes to get to the table.
Wholesome and relatively filling, Juice Bar’s toasted cheese is very much like the sandwich your mum would make on those lazy afternoons in front of the TV.
The fact that Juice Bar offers to make it with your choice of bread makes it more of a reminder of the hearty home meal.
I’m almost certain that they’d even cut off the crusts for you if you asked. Wimpy (R14.95) Wimpy, in true franchise fashion, provides the opposite of a homecooked meal with a quickly-prepared serving of toasted bread on either side of some processed cheese.
The basic toasted cheese doesn’t fill the shiny plate and although the sandwich is obviously not marketed as Wimpy’s best product, it isn’t half bad.
Ideally accompanied by a plate of chips, the Wimpy toasted cheese will be a good choice if you’d like to sit down, relax and enjoy a meal.
Steers (R9.90) Steers has managed to get the toasted cheese down to an art, grilling the sandwich to aesthetic perfection and having it ready for you in less than five minutes, for less than 10 bucks.
The sandwich holds its own as a stand-alone meal and Steers seem to have done their homework when it comes to providing an ideal takeaway meal that’s quick and cheap.
If you’re a fan of processed cheese and white bread (Steers don’t seem to know that any other type of bread exists), the toasted cheese is the perfect option if you’re out of cash and in a hurry.
