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The humble cheese toastie gets a gourmet makeover

Be prepared to question everything you think you know about the cheese toastie a.k.a. the lunchtime of our childhoods and The Best Hangover Cure Ever.

It used to look like this: 

https://instagram.com/p/7qPq6vONtu/
Courtesy: Liz T/Instagram

But not anymore.

More: 17 Mesmerising cheesy pizza GIFs that will make you want to lick your screen

The cheese toastie v.20 is so much more than a slab of cheddar inside two slices of thick white bread (however delicious that may be). We invite you to drool over these fancy variations.

1. Duck & Waffle’s Ox Cheek Grilled Cheese Sandwich

Onion jam, fried organic hen’s egg and sriracha (hot sauce made from chili peppers, distilled vinegar, garlic, sugar and salt) make this the perfect late night snack at the London eatery. Hangovers, be gone!


 £13, Duck & Waffle, 110 Bishopsgate, London EC2N 4AY

2. Meltroom’s Slow & Low Lamb Shoulder Melt

It’s a hard call between this and the MeltRoom’s Pulled Pork Shoulder Melt but slow-cooked lamb with romaine lettuce, Pommery mustard and melted Swiss cheese just takes the edge.

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Courtesy: MeltRoom/Instagram

£5, MeltRoom, 26 Noel Street, London, W1F 8GY

3. Northern Soul Grilled Cheese’s New Yorker

Manchester’s Northern Soul Grilled Cheese is actually an entire café devoted to cheese toasties. Take me there now.

This secret three-cheese blend on sour dough bread with pastrami, corned beef, slaw, pickle and mustard, served with pretzels on the side, would be my first choice. And then I’d work my way through the entire menu.


£7, Northern Soul Grilled Cheese, Church Street, Manchester, M4 1PN

More: Make the perfect grilled cheese in 7 easy steps

And to make at home: 

4. Heston Blumenthal’s Ultimate Cheese Toastie

When he’s not making chicken curry ice cream or fish eyeball cocktails, Blumenthal is busy honing his cheese toastie skills. His “ultimate” filling is cheese, ham and onion but as you can imagine it takes considerable time and attention to detail to put this thing together. The cheese toastie isn’t a quick and easy snack when you have to make your own cheese slices.

Get the full recipe here.

5. Jamie Oliver’s Anglo-French Toastie

Oliver’s approach is far simpler and doesn’t require five hours of ham-cooking or superior onion compote-making skills. Oliver’s recipe calls for “posh” cheese and ham (no supermarket saver brands allowed) but it’s not that fancy: basic thick white bread is favoured over fancy artisan doughs.

Get the full recipe here.

For those who think a cheese toastie should just be, well, cheese, check out Phil Vickery on This Morning. He showed us how to make his version of the perfect cheese toastie this week — with no onion jam or pastrami in sight.

What ingredients make the perfect cheese toastie? Tell us in the comments section below.

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