Melt

I will not discuss the intricacies of melts vs. grilled cheeses here, but I will try my best to not use the two interchangeably. We all know how that turns out ("You people make me sick."). 

Melt is situated on a plain little corner in Avondale, within walking distance of other trendy, delicious restaurants like Saw's Soul Kitchen, Big Spoon Creamery, and Taco Morro Loco (Which I will eat at ASAP), meaning its continued existence says something about its novelty’s ability to bring in customers and its food’s tastiness to make them come back.

Atmosphere: Bright and airy. Melt doesn’t have a big sign announcing their name, they just have their food truck with their logo parked out front. There’s ~5 parking spots, kids playing cornhole outside, and the whole building looks patchy and something a DIY dad would build in his DIY Dads Club. This isn’t bad, it’s just their vibe. For instance, there’s a full suit of armor inside, painted a pastel pink. Their waiting area has fairy lights as well as the only carpet in the whole building (shaggy I might add). The area I ate in was never restructured from being a garage, and even features rusty old gas price indicator signs as decor. Welcome to Avondale, home of hipsters and craft beers made in batches of 10 cans at a time. This place is kitsch to the extreme.

It wasn't this one exactly but they all look the same

It does cut down on renovating costs, considering that exposed brick and overhead piping/wires become part of the aesthetic as opposed to incompleteness… Geniuses, all of them. Beyond simple description, I like how CLEAN the space is inside. It’s hot outside but not stuffy at all inside, and there is no dust to be found. The concrete floor is impeccably clean. It’s almost clinical. It was a truly neutral environment that really tried to define its personality by the hodge-podge of items it had inside, a key characteristic that this is a capitalistic venture prioritizing commodities over actual personality. But I digress. Onto the melts!


Actual Food: Welcome to Melt, we sell melts. I ordered the Ole Smokey, which has turkey, bacon, lettuce, and tomato. Oh, and cheese. As I write this sentence, I have just realized that Melt is really just a glorified deli. Good sandwiches, but it’s still just a sandwich in the end. I like the amount of cheese on the outside of the bread as well as inside because it keeps the melt’s shell crispy and chewy, as an independent part of the melt that can exist without the meat or veggies.

This is my friend's food cause I ate my entire meal before realizing that I was here to experience and document

My side options were fries, tater tots, or tomato soup, and pro-tip, I LOVE tomato soup! It must hit the consistency of blood, and make me want to chew each bite. I want to be able to taste my initially too-hot soup by dipping my spoon in and having a decent mouthful of soup stick to it. None of this tomato broth bull. Soup is soup. Do it right.

The sauces Melt gives are featured next to every table’s centerpiece, which is a strawberry jam-patterned lunchbox that holds everything. The sauces are 41st Street Mustard, which is brown, and Rosemary Ketchup, which is red. The Mustard stings my nose in the way normal mustard does, but it’s sweet so it makes it bearable. Who even eats mustard? It’s got a weird sour flavor, and it adds no moistness only bitterness to anything, reducing its palatability. I argue the 2nd greatest buyer of mustard seeds after the consumer mustard industry is the Christian trinket industry, who seal and sell mustard seeds in epoxy necklaces. Mustard’s palatability coefficient is negative, meaning value of food after application is less than value of food before application. Confession: at 2:53 am on this good May 7th, I really can’t remember the taste of mustard. The ketchup was delicious but sweetened. Y’all should know my opinions on unnecessarily sweetened things already.

My empty plate, along with half of one of the best fries I've ever had!

Also, their fries are the bomb! They’re not crunchy (like American Deli’s fries), but they’re soft and full of starch, a mouthful of tasty, perfectly salted spud. Crispy outside that yields easily to youthful, powerful teeth. Gotta love ‘em. I am considering doing a fries ranking post because they are so universal to most places I eat.


Rating: Melt’s over-diligence to cleaning despite their building's patchy nature, weak facade for their “melts”, and sugar-dense sauces cannot be wholly balanced by their perfect fries or thick, tomato soup. 34/41 Street Mustards.