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Vince Morlet is the Grande Fromage and co-owner, who along with Head Cheese, Alex Tung, of their new venture, The Melt Shop, is offering gourmet grilled cheese and tomato soup to party-goers, waiting ferry passengers and festival fans.
Photo by Chung Chow
From fine dining to comfort food, and loving it
For Vince Morlet and partner, chef Alex Tung,
life couldn’t be better. The former owner-chef combo from Tapenade—a high end
restaurant near the Steveston waterfront—together have a food truck, The Melt
Shop, that is selling grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup.
But this is not two slabs of wonder bread,
with a reprocessed cheese slice in between, served beside a cup of reheated
tinned soup.
“Basically we’ve taken comfort food, but it’s
kind of fun. We took the idea of the grilled cheese and notched it up a little
bit but, with Alex being the kind of chef he is, he’s not doing just the
regular grilled cheese,” says Morlet, who jokingly goes by the moniker, Grande
Fromage (Big Cheese in French).
With artisanal bread from Richmond, a variety
of cheeses from a high end cheese purveyor, and the ingredients for the
carnivore offerings from Windsor Meats, the taste is a gourmet treat on the
street.
They didn’t want something goopy or that was
grilled cheese in name only.
“We have come up with some really interesting
sandwiches with different cheeses, with different fillings,” Morlet says. “Cheese
is still the start. It keeps it a grilled cheese.
“One of the things that bugs me when you have
grilled cheese and pull out chunks of stuff not cut up properly, like a bug
chunk of bacon or ham. So that was the problem; how to eat something not overly
messy? That’s where the bacon jam came in. The same with the smoked mozzarella,
and banana peppers,” Morlet says.
Tung, who has been given the nickname Head Cheese, spreads the Porker grilled cheese sandwich with his custom-made bacon jam. It is cooked in their Richmond-based, professional kitchen rented from the Alliance Church on No. 3 Road near Steveston Highway, where he also makes histomato soup from scratch.
“Because I’ve got two kids, Alex has two
kids, we just want to keep it simple. We’re seeing a lot of repeat customers
say, ‘That was convenient. That was fantastic.’ We want to have a little bit of
fun with it.”
Normally situated at the Tsawwassen ferry
terminal six days a week, The Melt Shop, as a food van is want to do, travels
to private celebrations and public festivals. They started their summer at the
Steveston Salmon Festival, July 1.
World Fest, Richmond’s tribute to the summer
that was, and the best kick-off to autumn to be found, runs Aug. 31 to Sept. 1
at Minoru Park and the Richmond Arts Centre.
“World Fest? Absolutely we’ll be at World
Fest! We are slated to be there on
Saturday Sept 1. We are going to be there from open till close.”
It is a taste that will linger in your memory
long after the summer sunlight fades and the winter rains patter on our
windows.
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