Fast-casual and takeout eats are everywhere downtown. But in the Junction it’s been virtually dine-in only – leaving a void primed for first-time restaurateur Randal So to fill with cheesy goodness. His Cut the Cheese opened last summer, offering a short menu of sandwiches and macs that reads like a love letter to dairy.
“I wanted to do something that was comfort-food-related,” So says. “I loved grilled cheese and mac and cheese growing up. I ate a lot of KD.”
The traditional nostalgia-fuelling elements of macaroni and grilled cheeses are still intact here, but So is committed to reinventing the classics as much as he can.
“Both foods are so versatile. Everybody, especially Canadians, knows grilled cheese and mac and cheese. But there’s so much you can do in terms of adding ingredients, making twists, doing fusions with different ethnic foods. It’s limitless.”
Natalia Manzocco
Each mac and cheese features cavatappi in béchamel infused with 3 ounces of cheddar, plus a crust of bread crumbs that, like nearly all of the ingredients and condiments, are made in-house. Instead of just mixing in the fixings, So puts extra labour into the individual sauces, creating a mushroom paste, for instance, to add extra cream-of-mushroom savouriness to the Shroomin’ mac.
The popcorn-chicken-topped Southern Comfort and chorizo-pepper Bull Fighter are the top sellers, but I’ll be returning for the Sasquash, which gets a lighter touch from roasted butternut squash, crunch from snow peas and major punch from balsamic-roasted tomatoes and a hearty helping of garlic.
On the off chance you’re still hurting for more flavour, So keeps rotating blends of house-made ketchup on hand – because what’s a fancy gourmet mac and cheese without fancy gourmet ketchup?
Cut the cheese’s housemade ketchups
(in ascending order of weirdness)*
Root Beer
“We add A&W root beer to our regular ketchup. That one has the most flavour, I feel – the most bite.”
Dill Pickle
“We make our own pickles, and we figured instead of tossing the pickle juice, why not incorporate it into our ketchup?” With the addition of fresh dill, the finished product tastes uncannily like pickle-flavoured Lay’s.
Pad Thai
So cautions that they might not bring this one back any time soon: “You have to add tamarind to it, lime, fish sauce – there’s a lot of ingredients, so it gets costly to make.”
Pineapple Banana
So introduced this fruity, tropical flavour in the summertime.
Candy Cane
A seasonal special! “It actually turned out a lot better than I thought it would. It was a pure experiment. It tasted how you’d think it would taste – sweet, with a little bit of spearmintiness. It was very strange, but it worked.”
*Other less eyebrow-raising flavours include curry, honey garlic and spicy jerk
2901A Dundas West, at Mavety, 416-901-7166, cutthecheese.ca
