On a beautiful morning, I got a call from my buddy who wanted to grab some brunch. He suggested Dougboys over in Mid-City. From what I’ve heard of Doughboys, I expected there to be a huge line, so I wasn’t too into the idea, but we still decided check it out with the intention to go somewhere else if the line was long. Fortunately, we found a manageable line and the fact that there were only two of us made the wait just about 5 minutes.
Once we took our outside seats, we took a look at the menu. Normal brunch food wasn’t too appealing to me, but did find something towards the back of the menu that looked delicious. It was called the After School Special and definitely fit the title. At $9.95, this special consisted of grilled cheese with french pan de mie bread, emmenthal, white cheddar and fontina cheese. To complete the special, it also came with a bowl of creamy tomato soup for dipping.
Although I expected a huge grilled cheese based on the ingredients and just enough soup for dipping, when my grilled cheese came out I found the opposite. Although the grilled cheese wasn’t technically small, it looked like a dwarf compared to the massive bowl of soup. But the grilled cheese looked crispy, gooey and delicious and I dug in. After a few bites, I was one happy, cheesy unvegan, but after a few bites more my mouth began to get dry. Now I’ve never been one for tomato soup with grilled cheese because I’ve never seen any reason to taint a perfect sandwich with tomato, but staring at that big bowl of soup, I realized I had to moisten my grilled cheese somehow.
I was a bit scared with my first dip, but I only used a little soup and it managed to redeem the dry grilled cheese. Rather than having a strong tomatoey flavor, the soup was more on the creamy side and tasted more like a creamy marinara sauce. Or at least that’s how I justified dipping my grilled cheese in it. With the soup, the grilled cheese ended up pretty tasty, but not as tasty as it could have been if it had started out more buttery.
I liked my After School Special, and although it did a decent job of making a grown-up version of my favorite sandwich, it was just a little too dry to kick me all the way back to my schooldays.
