National Grilled Cheese Month at Fremont Sunday Market
A classic Grilled Cheese with bacon and ham from the Grilled Cheese Experience food truck.
As a tantalizing aroma of melted cheese bubbled over the handful of food trucks and stands at the Sunday Fremont Market, the specialized event section faded into the background all for the National Grilled Cheese Day pop-up. This was an annual event that the market has to celebrate National Grilled Cheese month and bring business to the market.
Every Sunday in Fremont, locals can get together to talk, eat good food, and buy items in a flea market style environment. It’s in this European style market that the people of Fremont and Seattle citizens can get together at the “center of the universe.”
The market was started in 1990 by Jon and Candice Hegemon as a way to showcase the culture of the area, as well as to give people an opportunity to get together, now after nearly thirty years, the market is still being run as a family business. Ryan Ryder, the son of the Hegemons, makes sure the operation of the Fremont Sunday Market, as well as all its sister markets, runs smoothly.
“When the market started, this was really just a sleepy artistic neighborhood. Since then, with things like the Fremont social parade and the arts council, I feel like we’ve really grown with the neighborhood,” Ryder said.
In order to bring in fresh faces to the market and to help vendors get more traffic, events such as the grilled cheese pop-up are held. This week the market highlighted the popular classic,– the grilled cheese sandwich. Every year on April 12 people across the United States celebrate this cheesy goodness, usually with a bowl of tomato soup, and this year has been no exception.
At the market, there was an abundance of cheese-themed stands from raclette to toasties to the crisp three-layered showstopper itself. Of the many options, there was a selection of four sandwiches that I was able to try: The Cheese Pit, Bread and Circuses, Island Grill, and The Grilled Cheese Experience. Each sandwich had the required components, two slices of bread and cheese but each stand offered sandwiches that a new take on the classic flavors of the grilled cheese sandwich. Billy Eldridge, a chef at Bread and Circuses, was personally very excited about helping out the event.
“This event gets me out of my main routine. Usually we do sandwiches and burgers and we don’t really have grilled cheese, so I did the menu today,” Eldridge said. “It’s pretty much just the stuff I would like to eat, using the kind of stuff you would expect but with a bit of a twist,” said Eldridge.
Each sandwich was uniquely crafted, some with cheddar and others with a mix of cheeses, some with sourdough bread and others in a baguette. Some people stuck to the classics, while others chose to add adventurous items to their sandwiches, things like aioli, bacon, and kale. Marc Horsfield, a first year political science major, tried to explain all the flavors in his kalua pork sandwich.
“The bread was nice and crunchy on the outside, but fluffy on the inside and there was a lot of cheese. It was hot, perfect on a cold day. The pork added some texture and a bit of sweetness and savoriness to the sandwich,” Horsfield said.
For those that missed out on the event, the Grilled Cheese Grand Prix, put on by the same people that run the market, will be coming to a Ballard location in September, where sandwiches will go crust to crust to get the title of 2019’s best-grilled cheese sandwich. While you might have to wait for a whole year for the grilled cheese festivities to return to the Fremont, there is always a market on Sunday, rain or shine, always with new food and vendors to explore.
Logan may be reached at
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