You may have heard about The Big Cheese earlier this week, when it was announced that Rebel Heroes, had in fact sold their truck, and would no longer be roaming the streets with their banh mi revolution. EM DM was a huge fan of Rebel Heroes and we are very sad to see them go.
The Big Cheese has revamped the old Rebel Heroes truck with a whimsical grilled cheese sandwich logo. Today was only their second day on the streets of Arlington, and they have not even started tweeting their locations yet to their 600 hundred twitter followers. (You can follow them here).
Attaining 600 twitter followers before any cheese has melted on the cooktop shows the pent up excitement and demand for a grilled cheese truck. I have to admit that during all of this food truck hysteria I thought that a grilled cheese truck would be a perfect fit. After speaking to the owner of The Big Cheese, he said there are a bunch of people that have come up to him saying the same thing. Apparently everyone loves grilled cheese, and I am not the genius I thought I was.
Fear not residents of the District, I hear that another grilled cheese truck is in the works and will be serving up sandwiches sometime in December.
The Big Cheese seems to have all of the ingredients for success. The demand is there, because let’s face it, what is more comforting than grilled cheese when it’s cold outside? When your product is comprised of only a handful of ingredients, you need to make sure they are high quality. The bread at The Big Cheese is fantastic, and their cheese comes from one of our favorite cheese shops, Cowgirl Creamery. One of their artisan grilled cheese sandwiches is going to run you $6.50, and if you pair your grilled cheese with a small tomato soup, that will cost you $2 more.
Whether or not The Big Cheese succeeds in the crowded food truck landscape is going to come down to execution. A grilled cheese sandwich can go from melty and delicious, to hard and rubbery in a moments notice (especially in this weather). A proper grilled cheese sandwich takes some time, especially if you want all of the cheese melted while the buttered bread is toasted just enough. We hope they can pull it off. There certainly was a clamor of excitement around the truck today, and all of the passerby’s I encountered had a positive reaction upon passing the smiling grilled cheese truck.
We’ll give them some time to get their feet underneath them before we give a full review, and for we now we welcome The Big Cheese to the DC Food Truck scene and wish them well.
You didn’t try a sandwich or take any photos of the truck? Not a very informative blog post…
I did try a sandwich, but I did not think it was appropriate to give them a full review based on the second day of operations. I think they are still working the kinks out of their operations.