For Pavel Konko, it was a cheddar from the Deer Creek creamery in Wisconsin in the United States, infused with the flavours of tequila and habanero. One bite, and he knewhe wanted to learn more about cheese – and share his discoveries.
And so he started making grilled cheese sandwiches and posting them on a Reddit forum devoted to the dish. He labelled his first post “Day 1 of posting grilled cheese sandwiches until I run out of cheese types”. And then he kept up the promised pace – that is, until this week, when he brought what his supporters came to call his “Cheese Year” to a close with a final post.
During his 365 days of grilled cheeses, Konko was surprised at the community that rallied around him. People posted their own concoctions. They cheered him on. They shared deeper dives on the different creameries and varieties he picked. The forum is designed to be a repository of good vibes, according to its rules: “There are many things in this world that are worthy of your enraged passion and not one of those is a sandwich, so keep it cheesy.”
Konko had originally thought he might stop at 100 days, but he said the support of the Redditors inspired him to keep melting on. “Cheese is just awesome,” Konko said in an interview. “It was absolutely wonderful to see a place where people were just un-divisive and there was agreement on this one thing. I decided I would love to keep this energy going as long as I can, just because it’s not something I’ve seen much of recently.
“I had to take it upon myself to keep this flame of wholesomeness going.”
Grilled cheese enthusiast Pavel Konko, of Raleigh, North Carolina, might just be the hero we needed. Photo / Valentina Konko
It helped that the 31-year-old had recently been promoted to the cheese specialist job at the deli where he had been a clerk in Raleigh, North Carolina. He went through the catalogue at work, ordering pieces for himself. Then he worked his way through all the international and specialty markets and co-ops in his area, and finally turned to online sources.
Konko kept the process consistent to make the cheese the only variable: He prefers a single slice, cut on the thicker side, which he says gives a better “stretch” than a grated product or multiple thinner slices. He leaves the cheese out for 30 minutes to come to temperature before preparing the sandwich. He used the same bread, a Turano panini style, which he says has a neutral flavour that “lets the cheese shine”. He pressed each one identically in his deli’s panini press and photographed them from the same angle.
Someday, he says, he will probably mix up his process. “When I’m not doing it for this project, maybe I’ll do butter or mayonnaise, because why not?” he says. “But for the sake of science, that’s the sacrifice I had to make.”
Cheese and bread, after all, are what make a grilled cheese sandwich. That’s a golden rule of r/grilledcheese land. Once you start adding extras – such as jams or spreads or vegetables or meats – you’re making a melt, not a true grilled cheese, they believe. Konko says he likes the limitations that imposes. “I threaded the needle by having other ingredients already in the cheese,” he says. “If the cheese already has bacon in it, then I’m good. But if I added bacon to the grilled cheese, then I’m in melt territory.”
For each post, he gives notes on the flavour and meltiness and assigns an overall score. Highlights have included Beehive’s Big John’s Cajun, a cheddar from Utah punched up with garlic, celery seed and cayenne; and Wisconsin’s Ellsworth Cooperative Creamery’s garlic-flavoured cheese curds (Konko awarded them a 10 out of 10).
He doesn’t like anything too funky, and professes not to be much of a sophisticate. “I’m just a guy eating grilled cheeses,” he says. (For his final post, he used a double layer of Kraft singles, which he gave a five.) Cheese wasn’t a big part of his diet growing up, he says. He was born in Ukraine and moved to North Carolina with his family when he was 6.
Konko paid for his own supplies and estimates the entire experiment cost him about US$2500 ($4000), with the community kicking in about US$1000. To help support it, he started selling key chains in the shape of a pair of tiny denim pants made with a special fabric incorporating milk yarn.
The undertaking turned out to be a commitment of time and money, but he says it was worth it. Even when, on occasion, it felt like almost too much. Though his updates came daily, sometimes Konko would double up the production process, making two different sandwiches on one day and spreading out the posts. “There were times where I was like, ‘I can’t do this’,” he says. “But those were times that I knew future me would kick myself for breaking that streak. And that’s something that kept me going.”
Aside from sharing joy with fellow cheese lovers, Konko says the biggest lesson from his year-long experiment is just how many great American cheeses there are. “We all are infatuated with the European countries with their cheese and their culture, because they’ve been doing it for so long, right? You know, we make good cheeses, too,” he says. “It’s helped me appreciate what we have here.”
Now that his Cheese Year is over, Konko plans to eat a little healthier. He’s mulling entrepreneurial opportunities – maybe catering or a food truck. But the daily dose of grilled cheese hasn’t diminished his passion. He’s planning to stick around the Reddit forum, commenting on other people’s cheeses and sharing whatever new discoveries he makes.
And he’s just as enthusiastic as when he started.
“A grilled cheese is the best of the comfort foods – you can do it on a small budget. You could do it on a big budget. You can make it quickly. You can take forever. You can make it from a locally sourced item. You could make it from somewhere that’s far away. I think the grilled cheese is the equaliser of comfort foods.”
