(Photo: Noah Sheldon for New York Magazine)

Practically every day was a grilled-cheese day for the young Underground Gourmet, so imagine the Proustian shivers we got upon learning of Smith’s new Sunday Grilled Cheese Night. Smith’s Danny Abrams was inspired not only by a great love for grilled cheese but by the Los Angeles restaurant Campanile, which for the past decade or so has devoted its Thursday nights to the storied sandwich. It’s doubtful that at his previous Bouley and Jean Georges gigs chef Pablo Romero ever grilled even a single cheese, but judging by the perfectly golden specimens we tried, he has a knack. For now, all grilled-cheese chomping is restricted to the restaurant’s speakeasylike backroom bar and to five upscale variations on the gooey theme—from a mozzarella “spiedini” with wild-mushroom cream to a grilled Humboldt Fog with sliced pear. Sandwiches are $10 to $12 including shoestring fries, an arugula salad, and sumac pickles, but no tomato soup
(79 Macdougal St., nr. Houston St.; 212-260-0100).

Related:

• Archive: “The Underground Gourmet”
• Table of Contents: Apr 21, 2008 issue of New York | Subscribe!