The Sandwich Nobody Thinks About Until It Arrives
Grilled cheese is the least considered order on most menus. It is what you fall back on when nothing else appeals, which means it usually gets ordered without a single decision being made about it. Then it arrives, and it is either one of the better things you ate that week or a flat, greasy rectangle, and most people never work out why the two are so far apart.
Ours is built with up to five cheeses, which turns a default order into a real one. Bacon, extra cheese and avocado are all available on top of that. It sits in the breakfast section of the menu at Pier 69 Market, which here means it is available through the day rather than until eleven. Below is how to build it, what the add-ons actually do, and what to put next to it.
Up to Five Cheeses: How to Actually Choose
The instinct when a menu says five is to take five. Resist it for a minute, because what makes a grilled cheese good is not quantity. It is the relationship between two things: something that melts properly and something that tastes like it has an opinion.
Start With One That Melts
The texture everyone is actually chasing, the pull when you lift half the sandwich away from the other half, comes from a young, high-moisture cheese. That is the structural layer, and it does almost none of the flavor work. Skip it in favor of cheeses you find more interesting and you get a sandwich that tastes good and behaves badly: oily at the edges, grainy in the middle, separated rather than melted. One melting cheese is non-negotiable and it belongs against the bread on both sides.
Add One That Has Something to Say
The second cheese is the one you will remember. Older, drier, sharper, saltier: this is where the sandwich gets a personality. It goes in the middle, surrounded by the melting layer, because an aged cheese on its own against hot bread tends to break and weep rather than flow.
Where the Fifth Cheese Goes Wrong
A third cheese can earn its place if it brings something the first two do not, usually smoke or a stronger salt note. Past three, the returns stop. Cheeses are all variations on fat, salt and milk, and when you stack five of them nothing is distinguishable anymore. You taste salt and richness, and the thing you paid extra for is the thing you can no longer identify.
It is worth doing once, for the same reason anyone orders a sandwich with five cheeses on it. Just know what you are buying: a very rich sandwich, not five flavors. Ask at the counter what is in the case that day rather than guessing. The full menu has the current lineup and pricing, and anything else is a (718) 777-6969 call away.
Two cheeses chosen deliberately, one for the melt and one for the flavor, beat five chosen at random. The pull comes from the young cheese. The memory comes from the old one.
Bacon or Avocado: Pick One
Both are available, and they pull the sandwich in opposite directions.
Bacon adds salt, smoke and crunch, which is to say it adds contrast. It is the right call when the grilled cheese is the whole meal, because it breaks up what is otherwise a very uniform bite from the first corner to the last.
Avocado adds body rather than contrast. It makes the sandwich softer and more substantial and it reads as a cold-weather order, the kind of thing you want after a walk along the promenade with the wind coming off the Narrows. If you like what avocado does to bread generally, the avocado toast guide covers the rest of that argument.
Taking both at once is a lot of sandwich, so order it knowing you are unlikely to want anything else for several hours.
The Soup Pairing, Properly Considered
Grilled cheese and tomato soup is a cliche that happens to be correct, and the reason is chemistry rather than nostalgia. A grilled cheese is fat and salt with no acid anywhere in it, which is why the eighth bite is always less interesting than the first. Tomato is acidic. It resets your palate between bites and keeps the end of the sandwich as good as the beginning.
Creamy tomato is the pairing to order if that is what you are after. Chicken noodle works too and makes the whole meal feel lighter, which matters if the sandwich already has bacon on it. Soup changes with the day, so check before you build a plan around it. The soup guide covers both sides of that counter, the Bay Ridge lunch guide puts it next to the rest of the midday options, and on a grey afternoon the pair is close to the best thing on the menu, which is why it turns up in the rainy day guide too.
What to Drink With It
A grilled cheese is rich, salty and mild, so the drink should cut rather than add.
- Drip coffee, black. The simplest answer and the hardest to improve on. We pour La Colombe, and the bitterness does the same job the tomato soup does.
- A cortado or flat white. Enough milk to be pleasant, not enough to compete with the sandwich. The cortado versus flat white guide sorts out which one you want.
- Black or green tea. From the Rishi tea side of the counter, the tannins work exactly like acid here.
What not to order alongside it: anything sweet and milky. A flavored latte or a hot chocolate next to a grilled cheese gives you two rich things fighting for the same space, and the sandwich loses.
Build Yours at 10 Bay Ridge Ave
Grilled cheese with up to five cheeses, plus bacon or avocado if you want it, alongside La Colombe coffee and Rishi tea. Open from 6 AM on weekdays and 7 AM on weekends. Order ahead for pickup or have it delivered.
Takeout, Delivery and the Ten Minute Window
A grilled cheese is on a clock in a way that most sandwiches are not. The crust is crisp because moisture left it in the pan, and the moment it goes into a closed container, steam from the cheese starts putting that moisture back. You get roughly ten good minutes.
So: if it is going out, eat it first and let the rest of the order wait. Keep the bag open rather than sealed on the walk home, which lets steam escape instead of condensing on the bread. And if the plan involves a walk to Owl's Head Park or along the Shore Road promenade, eat the sandwich here and take the coffee with you rather than the other way around.
Pickup and delivery both run through GetSauce, and the Bay Ridge delivery guide explains how that works from here.
The Order That Works for a Table of Kids
Grilled cheese is the most reliable thing on any menu for a child who has already rejected two other options, and that is not a knock on it. The useful move is to order theirs plain, one melting cheese and nothing else, and keep the five-cheese version for yourself.
The kids menu guide and the family-friendly cafe guide cover the rest of a family visit. For a larger group, orders run through our catering page, and the corporate catering guide covers how we handle a headcount and a delivery window.
Where to Find Us
Pier 69 Market is at 10 Bay Ridge Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11220, open Monday through Friday from 6 AM to 9 PM and Saturday and Sunday from 7 AM to 9 PM. The phone is (718) 777-6969, and pickup and delivery both run through GetSauce. We are a waterfront cafe a few minutes from Owl's Head Park, the Shore Road promenade and the NYC Ferry landing, serving La Colombe coffee and Rishi tea. The sandwich lineup is on the menu, the midday options are on the lunch page, directions and hours are on the visit page, and anything we have not answered here is on the FAQ or a phone call away.
