The Melt Shop
The Melt Shop is a new chain of fast-food grilled-cheese sandwiches sprouting up all over Manhattan. But this is not your mother’s grilled cheese (if you had the sort of old-school mother who would but some American cheese between two slices of Wonderbread).
I just ate a grilled chicken sandwich, with Havarti, roasted tomatoes and truffle mayo on multi-grain toast. Very delicious.
Note that bobos/SWPLs can eat this type of food if it has fancy-sounding ingredients. But food from McDonald’s with the same cholesterol count is the most evil food on the planet.
Lion of the Blogosphere 
“Note that bobos/SWPLs can eat this type of food if it has fancy-sounding ingredients. But food from McDonald’s with the same cholesterol count is the most evil food on the planet.”
It’s posturing and status signalling all the way down for people like that.
Oswald Spengler
November 29, 2014 at 4:05 PM
But the really rich often LOVE doing the opposite, slumming it in the most working class dives/diners/truck stops//taverns/environs they can find. So much so it was the subject of a popular song by the band Pulp. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yuTMWgOduFM. Only the middle classes/upper middle classes feel the need to ‘signal.’ The really rich expect you to know who they are. Fussell talks about TOOS parties where they serve cheap California box wines in dixie cups.
Curle
November 29, 2014 at 10:49 PM
If you ever visit Houston you should try Bubba’s Burger Shack which serves great burgers in a little establishment under a highway overpass with authentic prole ambience. You can get a grilled cheese sandwich for $3.25.
Jim
November 30, 2014 at 10:57 AM
This is like a store that sells nothing but Peanut Butter & Jelly sandwiches.
Oh, wait. Peanut Butter & Co has been open in the Village since 1998. This was stolen directly from a Seinfeld episode.
ScarletNumber
November 29, 2014 at 4:17 PM
You’re supposed to upload pictures of your food if you’re a true bobo/SWPL
Russ
November 29, 2014 at 4:27 PM
This could be the new trend. Can someone come up with a fancy corndog or sloppy joe?
BehindTheLines
November 29, 2014 at 4:38 PM
My parents fed us loaves of compressed gravel-like substance. It was awful and I hated sandwiches growing up…
Some Guy
November 29, 2014 at 5:02 PM
One time my brother and I begged our mother to buy souse loaf. One bite and our gastronomic curiosity had withered, but she made us eat souse loaf sandwiches until it was used up.
The Abbot of Lufford
December 5, 2014 at 2:56 PM
That would be a great idea for a sandwich shop using OPM — The Souse House. All we would sell would be souse loaf, head cheese, peepee (P&P) loaf, Cotto salami, and Lebanon bologna. Your cheese options would be Limburger, gorgonzola, casu marzu, and parmigian reggiano.
A hard liquor license would be a must of course. Topless waitresses might help too.
The Abbot of Lufford
December 5, 2014 at 5:40 PM
There’s a resturant chain in the mid-west, Zupa’s, that has a great grilled cheese. But what they do really well is soup, almost all of them cream-based. And the fat would give McDonald’s a run for its money. But it’s also filled with SWPLs (and the ones I’ve been to have iPhone charging stations).
Half Canadian
November 29, 2014 at 7:14 PM
Not sure if serious, but a place called Zupa’s should do soup well.
ScarletNumber
December 1, 2014 at 10:42 PM
this was something Ehrenreich pointed out in the 80s in her book about yuppies, http://www.amazon.com/The-Worst-Years-Our-Lives/dp/0060973846.
but there’s more too it than saturated fat and cholesterol content.
there is an objection to anything fake and processed.
this is greater than ever with the paleo-diet and paleo-fitness “movement”.
and all of the empirical evidence supports it.
Robert Gabriel Mugabe
November 29, 2014 at 7:49 PM
I wonder if you can be a SWLP/bobo conservative or libertarian.
grey enlightenment
November 29, 2014 at 8:18 PM
One can enjoy the taste of Havarti cheese over American cheese, but still think there’s too much immigration.
Lion of the Blogosphere
November 30, 2014 at 7:52 AM
American cheese is of course prole, when you compare it to Havarti cheese.
Fried Havarti is one my favorites. Cut a thick slice, dip it in flour, then fry it over a pan and then throw in a few drops of brandy when almost done, then flaming it with a lighter. Say Opa in Greek, you damn SWPL!
JS
November 30, 2014 at 3:41 PM
One time, years ago, I wanted a grilled cheese but all the pans were dirty. So I used the clothes iron.
Peter
ironrailsironweights
November 29, 2014 at 10:11 PM
Doesn’t NYC have restaurants where you eat all courses while laying down? Also, I once read something about a place in Manhattan that serves all food in dishware shaped like toilets.
I guess it takes a lot to stand out in a crowded restaurant field.
Camlost
November 30, 2014 at 12:17 AM
I never heard of either of these places.
Lion of the Blogosphere
November 30, 2014 at 7:53 AM
I just ate a grilled chicken sandwich, with Havarti, roasted tomatoes and truffle mayo on multi-grain toast.
destructure
November 30, 2014 at 1:23 AM
Didn’t the tomatoes make it a bit soggy? Or were they sun-dried?
Sheila Tone
December 1, 2014 at 12:44 AM
Your post with the YT video of Barbarino and his Jackson NAM is lumprenpulp fiction.
JS
December 1, 2014 at 10:31 AM
If you know the difference between Parmesan and Parmigiano Reggiano, you’re SWPL.
jjbees
November 30, 2014 at 3:14 AM
Or an Italian American prole.
Peter Akuleyev
November 30, 2014 at 8:46 AM
I know the difference between Parmesan and Parmigiano Reggiano, but I drive a truck and live in the desert in a double wide, and shoot guns all the time. What am I?
Some Guy
November 30, 2014 at 12:48 PM
Drive truck for a living? Sam Walton drove a truck.
BTW – Is the gun range (shooting) thing solely to improve accuracy, like a golf range, or is there something more? I used to know a judge who loved the shooting range and dragged me along. Never understood the thrill.
Curle
November 30, 2014 at 1:35 PM
SWPL, or Italian American prole.
jjbees
November 30, 2014 at 2:58 PM
a prole who likes cheese. unless your truck is being driven ironically and your choice to live in the desert was based on lowering your carbon footprint.
GM
November 30, 2014 at 4:53 PM
I’ll take prole, no known Italian American in me. I don’t drive a truck for a living, I took the Derb’s advice (“get a government job”). I live in the desert because the DoE (what a colossal waste of money) likes putting stuff in the desert.
And I shoot guns for the fun. I compete in F-Class High Power, and I also practice regularly for hunting. And apparently know more about cheese than 9/10 of you SWPLs 😉
Some Guy
December 1, 2014 at 10:27 PM
Off topic. You really need to do a background report on NY Times reporter Julie Bosman. She was the reporter who published the address of Ferguson cop Darren Wilson. She also has a criminal record for shoplifting when she was 17 and got busted. She went to U Wisconsin and grew up in Wisconsin and she covers the Midwest for the NY Times.
GMR
November 30, 2014 at 8:08 AM
I’m sure it (the shoplifting) was a cry for help.
ice hole
December 1, 2014 at 6:10 AM
Next will be a Spam Sandwich Shoppe.
Jim
November 30, 2014 at 10:42 AM
There probably are in Hawaii.
Anthony
November 30, 2014 at 9:12 PM
http://www.yelp.com/biz/musubi-cafe-iyasume-honolulu?osq=spam+musubi
Curle
December 1, 2014 at 12:46 AM
What’s the booze menu at this place? Gotta have Pabst for the hipsters…
Tanked
November 30, 2014 at 12:16 PM
I don’t know the difference between Parmesan and Parmiggiano Reggiano, and I’m Toscano. I do know that I hate hate hate Parmesan cheese, and have often even moved to a different table in a restaurant just to escape the smell coming from another diner’s plate. And there’s a special circle of hell reserved for restaurants that put Parmesan on the food before you have anything to say about it. I like to shoot guns, but I can’t hit anything. On the other hand, I’m very accurate with a 5-iron. I drink McDonald’s coffee every day, but have never touched their food. My last fast food was a chicken sandwich at Jack in Box in SF in 1982. I threw up.
floyd
November 30, 2014 at 1:13 PM
lion, if you don’t know the problem that is mcdonalds, i have a book recommendation for you:
http://www.amazon.com/Fast-Food-Nation-Dark-All-American/dp/0547750331
rivsdiary
November 30, 2014 at 1:16 PM
In graduate school, I would pass a McDonald’s on the way into the office on weekends. I would usually get 2 dubba cheez for lunch and the same with fries for dinner, sometimes 3 if I was especially stressed out. By Monday morning (close to 48 hrs on the McD’s Diet Plan), my shits smelled exactly like a freshly-unwrapped McDonald’s burger. A Crappy Meal, as it were.
The Abbot of Lufford
December 5, 2014 at 3:03 PM
lion, OT but don’t be afraid to weigh in on this issue!
http://www.unz.com/isteve/richard-bradley-is-the-rolling-stone-story-true/
http://www.richardbradley.net/shotsinthedark/2014/11/24/is-the-rolling-stone-story-true/
rivsdiary
November 30, 2014 at 4:44 PM
Grilled goat cheese with sauvignon blanc:
http://www.winespectator.com/webfeature/show/id/47084
SWPLs are soooooo…….PROLE!!!!
Wade Nichols
November 30, 2014 at 6:25 PM
“the same cholesterol count”
The tradition grilled cheese will have more cholesterol than your edified version which was toasted and not fried in butter. However, dietary cholesterol is now supposed to be good for you, right? So say the paleos who endorse the consumption of egg yolks.
slithy toves
December 3, 2014 at 6:17 PM
It was actually fried. That’s why it tasted so good.
Lion of the Blogosphere
December 3, 2014 at 8:17 PM