Grilled Cheese on Wheels

In Los Angeles food trucks serve everything from tacos, to sushi, to vegetarian fair, but my favorite so far is the Grilled Cheese Truck.

One day when attending an art festival in Beverly Hills I discovered what has to be one of the best mobile food trucks I’ve ever had the pleasure of eating from, The Grilled Cheese Truck. Now grilled cheese is such a basic, common food that you’d never think it would be something you might want to actually go out to eat. This truck however, had the most delicious tasting grilled cheese ever. They offer four varieties of cheese: American, sharp cheddar, double cream brie and Gruyere and you can add everything from bacon to fresh basil to smoked turkey. There are specialty sandwiches like the Cheesy Mac and Rib (macaroni & cheese, sharp cheddar, BBQ pork and caramelized onions) and the Harvest Melt (butternut squash, leeks, balsamic and agave syrups) and for dessert there is the Dessert Melt (banana puree, nutella & marshmallow). The truck is simple heaven for grilled cheese lovers.

For those who follow the Grilled Cheese Truck they’ve posted a calendar as they visit everything from festivals to the annual Los Angeles Grilled Cheese Invitational in April (national grilled cheese month.) They can also be found on Twitter. They regularly serve about 500 sandwiches per day, 300 for lunch alone. While it’s sincerely doubtful if they will serve you a Virgin Mary grilled cheese sandwich their friendly manner and assembly line style leave a lasting impression of efficiency, smiles and homespun welcome.

While cheese has some health benefits including good teeth, strong bones and relief from hypertension, it also is high in fat and sodium and the addictive opiate quality of cheese can cause cravings that are hard to ignore especially when presented in a gourmet manor. The Grilled Cheese Academy  has recipes galore celebrating this classic sandwich. From ancient Roman times to modern day cheese is a staple that produces smiles, insanity, and relief from hunger. But most of all, as Pinky would say it’s “yummy”!

Nostalgia at 45 RPM

Amoeba Music claims to be the world’s largest independently owned music store and I believe them. On Sunset Blvd. between North Cahuenga Blvd. and Ivar Avenue it takes up an entire city block. With vinyl record albums taking up about a third of the store, walking through the doors is like doing the time warp.

Sifting through the albums brought back sounds, pictures, smells, parties of two and parties of two hundred, revelations, revolutions, fantasy and history. Shared experiences dovetail between music and movies, between cultural clashes and cultural celebrations, between reality and dreams. It was a shared odyssey of the senses, a journey of new experiences, new sounds, new images, new ideas, challenges and growth. The kind of growth through experience that Mother never taught us. Some of us made it and some of us didn’t. We were in free fall and didn’t realize it until we hit the ground.

There were some albums and experiences everybody had. Who could forget Carole King’s Tapestry, Chicago’s big chocolate bar, and Jefferson Starship’s Red Octopus, a many tentacled heart. Everyone spent a night at the Hotel California with the Eagles. Frampton came alive, Elvis died and the Beatles officially broke up.

Queen rocked us, Led Zeppelin showed us the way to heaven and Lynard Skynard taught us how to fly free. Billy Joel was a stranger and Neil Young said not to let things get you down. AC/DC was back in black and Johnny Cash was the man in black. Rod Stewart told us that with love the first cut is the deepest and the Stones fought off wild horses in the name of love. We learned that if you don’t eat your meat you can’t have any pudding. The building of a wall was documented and another wall came tumbling down.

Bruce Springsteen was born to run and Tommy ran away from it all, retreating into his own world. George Carlin said the seven words you can’t say on radio and Richard Prior set ears on fire with his language and himself on fire with a lighter. We fought killer bunnies and searched for the Holy Grail while some days a hard rain just fell.

Barbara Streisand was born a star, Stevie Nicks vamped it up like a gypsy princess, and Cyndi Lauper just wanted to have fun.

Electric Light Orchestra evolved from a neon hood ornament into a space dock. Jefferson Airplane became a starship. We had aliens from France, Mork from Ork, Wookies and Trekies. Aliens ate meatloaf and Meatloaf flew like a bat out of hell.

Today you can buy an LP to digital music converter, change your old LPs to MP3s and listen to your personal collection on your iPod. You can even share your playlist by docking your MP3 player, but the experience of vinyl still can’t be beat. It’s not just audible, it’s also tactile, visual and above all memorable. It’s a group experience, a cultural sharing rather than an individual, solitary journey. John Belushi went on a road trip and never found his way home, Peter Fonda & Dennis Hooper went looking for America and didn’t survive the trip, but we went looking for America and we found it… in our music.