This is a somewhat ‘throw away’ story of going from hero to zero, a case of chalk to cheese, or rather in this case from cheese to chalk. I came from such an excellent lunch at Marion Street Cheese market all the way down to a rather inept sandwich at ‘Toasted’. To be fair I was in a shopping mall, but you cannot really get a toasted cheese sandwich wrong, can you?

I found myself standing  in front of the “Toasted” concession at Westfield Mall in Vernon Hills, and ‘slightly desperate’ or ‘hungry’ one of the two anyhow. I was feeling like I could not possibly eat at a goddam chain (today at least) and I had already fought off the women from the Chinese stall offering free samples of bourbon chicken on a cocktail stick (I did have one). I just needed something different to sustain my belief in humanity.

On the face of it ‘Toasted’ looked different, I had never seen one before so hoped it was not a chain, I like grilled cheese, and the counter assistant was not acne ridden or a chav, so I was hopeful. I ordered or rather selected a three cheese offering of swiss, american, and cheddar, with a herby garlic cream. It had some sort of name like ‘herby three cheese’, I didn’t bother to write it down.

The ‘shall we call him the cook’ took three square slices of processed cheese out of three identical plastic wrappers, smeared some paste out of a jar on a slice of bread, and jammed a sandwich into a panini press until a light came on or went off. It would be far too technical for me to explain the finer details.

So what was the verdict on the sandwich… it gave me indigestion

but I did like the concept and the balls to try something more original in a Mall Food Court