grilled cheese invitational

oh my God, last night was so much fun! i love doing totally random things in this city, or anywhere, but the grilled cheese invitational has to be on the top of the random things to do list. Ok, so my friend spancer who i've worked with for a long time has a bunch of friends who every year have the grilled cheese invitational. what is it you ask? it's basically a grilled cheese competition with 3 categories: missionary (you compete using only bread and american cheese) kama sutra (you can really mix it up with differnent types of bread and all sorts of cheese and add salsa or peppers or anything you want, one guy added lucky charms cereal in his) and then dessert category which has a funny name but i don't remember it. this is my second time attending and a few years ago, spancer competed and came in 3rd in the missionary. this year he competed in the missionary category and each "sandwich" was in the shape of a cube withc bread on all sides and cheese goodness in the middle. so basically outside people are grilling up with sandwiches and then get a cheese runner to run into the finished product inside where there are testers (thats where me and my friends come in) and put the sandwich (small ones, just bite size taste test) on a paper plate and attached to the plate is a scorecard, so you eat the sammich, score it and then a helper hands the score card to the people behind the computers who enter the scores into the computer to determine a winner, im' tellng you this thing runs so smoothly. there had to be like 150 there eating and cooking and just hanging out. I gave up sweets for lent so i couldn't try the dessert category, but some of the sandwiches were so fucking good, like one guy used date walnut bread that had raisins in it and and a funky cheese, but it rocked and another person had really thick bread and cheese and then dumped red hot salsa on the sandwhich and cayenne pepper too and holy moly was that hot! then another one i tasted was just a bunch of different cheeses between bread but the bread was in the shape of a breadstick, whatever it was, it was amazing. i really didn't have a bad sammy in the whole lot and i tried like 10 sammy's. anyway, after that, i went to my friend tal's 30th birthday, also downtown, and michael vartan from alias was there as was fred savage from the wonder years and fran dresher from the nanny, and then a bunch of t.v. execs and writers, a very interesting mix. it was at this restaurant called ciudad and it has a patio outfront and it was an awesome space and free drinks and food and the cake looked good but once again giving up sweets for lent has decreased my eating fun the past month. ugh, anyway, it was an awesome night! and seeing as the grilled cheese and tal's party was free, i didn't spend much other than valet parking and gas.

oh and happy birthday cathy!!

check out the grilled cheese web site
http://grilledcheeseinvitational.com/