The Cleveland Park restaurant Ripple opened its new artisanal grilled cheese bar Tuesday evening. We were there Monday for a media preview and wanted to share our take on the gooey goodness. After all, the most expensive concoction employs a rare Swiss cheese—challerhocker—with hand-sliced prosciutto and truffle butter to please even the most discriminating turophile.
The decision to open up a grilled cheese bar (just adjacent to the regular bar) was a natural one for owner Roger Marmet.
“I think we have one of the best cheese programs in the city,” he said. And there are no individually wrapped American cheese slices. No Wonder Bread either for that matter. Three cork boards at the front of the restaurant have fancy names thumb-tacked to them. Herbillette. Nuvola di pecora. Winnimere. Those and a dozen others sit under glass on display by the colorfully tiled bar. A Panini press had been collecting dust in the back as the restaurant went in the direction of a chef driven, daily evolving menu featuring seasonal and local ingredients over hot sandwiches. Put those cheeses and that press together, lend a bit of training to turn the cheese monger into a melted cheese monger, and the grilled cheese bar was born.
The grilled cheese menu includes seven sandwiches ranging in price from $8 to $12. The Swiss Bank Account, featuring the aforementioned challerhocker, stands out on account of the generous slathering of truffle butter. A Krusty Krab features lump crab with béchamel and creamy Mt. Tam. The Stinky Pete, with its Spanish torta la serena—a sheep’s milk cheese with notes of thistle and cardoon, asparagus and anchovy—is complex and distinctive. The housemade mozzarella on the Lotsa Mozza doesn’t melt like the others, but still blends well with roasted tomatoes, basil and speck.
Perhaps more fun is checking the boxes on the red and white paper menus to create one’s own concoction. The menu implores the patron: “Don’t make it gross, please stop at two cheeses.” The available cheeses are on the flipside of the menu, categorized by milk type, rind and mold. So I could look to the stinky blues, notice the apple notes in the stichelton and pair it with a strawberry-black pepper jam. “If you dream it,” the menu reads, “we can build it.”
The grilled cheese bar is available every Sunday from 5 to 6:30 p.m. and again from 10:30 to midnight. They don’t come cheap, but we’re not dealing with Kraft singles here! And my sithcelton creation (I also had some washed-rind pichin and pickled onions for good measure) came with six or seven generous slices. To sweeten the deal, the nearly 50 wines by the glass and draft beers are half price during the first seating.
Ripple is located at 3417 Connecticut Avenue NW. (202)-244-7995
