Grahamwich

I’ve been wanting to try this place for a while, and finally my husband and I were able to go on a quiet Sunday afternoon! I really liked the food. The sandwiches are tasty and fresh, and the service was quick and friendly. I ordered the pastrami Reuben, my husband ordered the roast beef, and we split a roast beet salad. My only criticism is that the salad could have been less expensive and the roast beets didn’t really taste roasted at all. Other than that I recommend trying this place and taking it to a nice park for a picnic.

Man, I’m kind of bummed to see that this place closed and that I’m only able to right my review until now. Well, when I was in Chicago in the spring, I made a stop here. I remember my grilled cheese sandwich being pretty amazing. The popcorn was fantastic. I also grabbed some donuts to go.
Oh well.

CLOSED

This is a great spot to pop into for a quick and hasty gourmet-​style lunch. They do have craft sodas and root beer, as well, that play nicely into the whole diner aspect. However this is definitely a higher end version of a fast paced lunch spot. The kale salad was perfectly crunchy and spot on with the dressing and toppings, but my favorite was the lox and bagel: complete with a generous potions of smoked salmon and my absolute must-​have ingredient, capers. Yum! The service was a little aloof and rude, but hey — it was a busy lunch break and I was an annoying customer that does the typical «Ummm…what do I want?» while the line forms behind me.

Listen up Wisconsin Cheeseheads, I have found your holy grail of cheese.
I was a woman on a mission, I never really looked at the menu I knew what I was ordering based on the 150+ Unilocal reviews for the grilled cheese. I figured it was a sign that it had to be down right amazing. I also got a free beverage for checking-​in (I went with soda), normally it’s $ 3 (and they poured it from a 2-liter)…ripoff!
The grilled cheese was more cheese than grill. It’s got to be packing a quarter pound stack of Wisconsin cheddar and cheese curds along with a little tomato marmalade. It’s all melted together like a hot, messy, cheesy, love fest between two toasty buns. Oh.Goodness.Gracious. And the tomato marmalade *genius* adds a much needed acidity to cut through all that cheese. Afterwards I rolled off into a cheese induced coma, I could have hibernated for a week after that one. Damn right it was amazing.

Sometimes I dream about this place.
Everytime I come to Chicago, Grahamwich is a necessary first stop. I’ve tried the grilled cheese, the fennel salad, and the truffle popcorn. All of these were so unique and delicious. The star of the show is the cinnamon stick dessert. Now, I have to say I’m a complete dessert snob and this takes the cake (no pun intended). I wish Graham Elliot would open a place in NYC! Also, I think their website might be the most adorable site I have ever seen:

Definitely watched one of the cooks come back from smoking a cigarette and get back on the line without washing his hands.
And they forgot the tomato jam in my grilled cheese. :(
Also, it’s a little sad watching orders pile in and the guys on the sandwich assembly line stand around and play with their phones.
Grahamwich, what happened?

I am eating rebeun salami sandwich with fresh lemonade now.
Soooooooo good!!!
Sandwich is so tasty with special sauce.
I also love their nature garden background.
I will definitely come back to this place

I’ve been dying to try this place, even though many of my friends had warned me that it was way too expensive for what its worth. I really enjoyed my cuban sandwich (and it even heated up well the next day for left overs). I also tried the pasta salad, but it wasn’t as flavorful as I had expected. I did however check in on Unilocal!and received a free pop with my order! (Thanks Unilocal!)
I would say that even though the sandwich was very tasty, I most likely won’t be going there again in the near future as it wasn’t that much better than a normal sandwich shop to warrant such high prices.

The sandwiches here are really great, and usually they’re made really delicious and served warm. However, sometimes their sandwiches are made inconsistently. This one time I got the Roast Beef Sandwich and the person had given me way too much mustard on it, and it almost tasted like wasabi. But other times I’ve gotten it it’s really good and one of my favorite sandwiches.
If I were to recommend anything it would be definitely be the sandwiches, they have a great selection and all them have really great combinations of ingredients. On their other things, such as their desserts or breakfast, I don’t think they’re quite as good because some of the menu items are trying too hard. For example, I got a ‘small pickle’ and it ended up being a container of various vegetables that were pickled. I was not expecting this overly fancy pickle dish, I just wanted a normal pickle. Plus it wasn’t that great to justify its creativity. Another time I got a yogurt parfait and there was way too much syrup in it, defeating the purpose that it was supposed to be healthy. I haven’t tried any of the other items, but if anything I would only come here for their sandwiches and nothing more.

I was excited to try this place out because of it’s owned by Graham Elliot, and while I thought the food was good, there was nothing quite spectacular about it that would drive me to want to eat here again.
I had the Heirloom turkey sandwich, and while it brought a nice taste of Thanksgiving to my mouth, it felt like something was missing. I’m probably being hard on it because I miss Ike’s Sandwiches in San Francisco — super popular place with a similar sandwich that’s just way better. Chips were decent too. It’s also a bit pricey for the small size of sandwich that I got.
**Make sure to check in on here and that *other* program for 2 different offers**

After checking into Hotel Palomar right down the street around 1pm, my eastern time zone tummy was ready for lunch, and my four female co-​workers seemed to agree.
We stumbled upon Grahamwich and decided to give it a try. We arrived at the opportune moment as a longer line began to form when we were ordering and waiting for our food.
I ordered the Heirloom Turkey (turkey, cranberries, stuffing, brie and mayo on a pita) while my co-​workers ordered two Mediterranean Veggies (veggies + goat cheese on flat bread), the Grilled Cheese, and a salad. Both the Mediterranean Veggies and the Grilled Cheese looked delicious, and I was quickly regretting my decision to order the Heirloom Turkey. The turkey had a nice flavor but was pretty dry. The top half of the pita was very bland — all I could taste was dry turkey and plain pita. I was hoping that the bottom half would be better. Though the pita improved once I reached the cranberries and brie, I was still disappointed. Plus, the promised stuffing and mayo were essentially nonexistent.
The restaurant is attractive and has a cool aesthetic but is very small with almost nonexistent seating. There are bars toward the front with seating for 10 or so people that were nearly full. The back of the restaurant had one family style table with awkwardly low and crowded leather ottomans to sit on. My team and I squeezed into a section of the table, but I found it very awkward to get up and down from it. While trying to get up from my seat and throw away my tray, I almost stumbled onto a baby in a stroller whose mom was sitting at the end of the table. Definitely not a kid friendly place…
The wait time was probably 5 – 8 minutes for most of our meals though the Grilled Cheese probably took 15 mins. I was confused by this… if the Grilled Cheese is one of the specialties of the restaurant, why wouldn’t it come out quickly?
After eating our food, one of my co-​workers decided to order a coffee beverage. All five of us stood waiting at the front of the restaurant while she ordered the drink and then we waited… and waited… and waited for that drink. I think it took five minutes to make a simple coffee drink.
Though the restaurant is cute, I was overall unimpressed with the experience. I definitely won’t be seeking this restaurant out when I return to Chicago in the future.

After almost 22 months, I gave Grahamwich another shot. And it’s still (trilling the r’s in my condescending, faux Spanish accent) CDDDDRRRRAP.
I expect a high degree of polish from a chef who won a reality show… or whatever his claim to fame was.
Metal food trays that are supposed to look like they’re from a farmhouse diner look worn, dinged up and dirty. I hope the paint they used on the trays is lead-​free, because it looks like it’s peeling. It probably isn’t, but still… the flea market/​garage sale chic only looks good in those glossy «Country Living» magazines. The only place I expect to see trays like that are southern roadhouses that serve drinks in mayonnaise jars. I don’t think a place like Grahamwich would stoop to that level, but I wouldn’t bet against it in the future.
The tacky-​ass ATM machine is STILL in the front as you walk in. Nothing says class like an out-​of-​state bank’s ATM that gouges you a huge fee just to get the twenty note you’ll need for an expensive meal here.
They now take credit cards? Oh thank heaven. Grahamwich, welcome to 1975.
This place still looks like it’s in the middle of a rehab. Are you going to fix up the interior so it doesn’t look like you bought everything at flea markets, or not? The wood is splitting in some places, the walls could use fresh paint, and the floor could use a good cleaning and a shine. This place is not as fresh as I’d expect from – again, remind everyone – a chef who won a reality show… or whatever his claim to fame was.
The food is not worth the expensive prices they charge either. I noticed my tofu sandwich thing ($ 7) was sort of tasty, but it couldn’t overcome the lousy, soggy pickles served in – I kid you, not – a plastic drink cup. Oh, for the love of bejezus… spend some money and get something else to lay the pickles on for people who dine in. Did they run out of something called, PLATES? Yeah, plates… to have them might be a novelty in a place like this. I paid $ 3 for six friggin’ slices of wilted-​looking pickles in a see-​through plastic Solo-​style drink cup.
So Unilocalers, go ahead and love this place as much as you want. I’m done with them. I won’t be back… FO’EVAH. Judging from the slow, dismal trickle of people ordering during what I thought would be a noon lunch rush, I doubt you’ll have to stand in line for any length of time.

Yum.
We stopped here because Im a huge Masterchef fan. Yup, I admit it.
So worth it. We both had the grilled cheese. My husband had the orange soda they make in house and I had the vanilla kola.
The sodas were meh, a little too sugary even for me. Luckily there was a large pitcher of ice water at each table. The grilled cheese was *delicious*. Im usually not a fan of tomato in my grilled cheese, but their tomato marmalade was soooo good. It was too cheesy for my taste, but also greasy and delicious and just what an unexpectedly cold day warrants.
And can we talk about the truffle popcorn for a minute. I want that stuff shipped to me weekly, SO good. We ended up taking ours on our jaunt around the city. The perfect Chicago snack.

A Grahamwich as your first meal of the day is probably not the smartest. But I did it. And it was worth it.
If you check-​in on Unilocal they have an offer for a free soda, so I had their Vanilla Coke. Really it was just coke but it tasted like that old fashioned, not too carbonated coke.
I went basic with their grilled cheese sandwich — Wisconsin Cheddar, tomato marmalade, cheese curds, and «buttery goodness» on top of a pullman loaf. I have to point out I love Chicago’s availability of cheese curds, in California I usually have to make them from scratch, so I am a big fan of the state’s proximity to Wisconsin and all the cheese. The tomato marmalade was the perfect topping to the sandwich, I’d get a little of it in each bite which (nicely) broke up the flavor of all the cheese and butter.
If you’re still on the fence even after my fantastic review, just go in and eat it. Its $ 7 — You won’t regret it!

I’m pretty sure the Grahamwich craze is over, so I had entirely forgotten about it when the bf suggested we pop in this past Sunday. I came in knowing it was spendy and that the portions were small. So I didn’t want to make this review about price/​value ratio etc., especially because I’m not a big volume eater (gasp! I know. Shock and awe.)
But yet, it comes back to that. The turkey harvest sandwich, while decent, wasn’t $ 9 good. For a half of a pita. And the pita was really thin and the avocado dressing was all crammed in the bottom so that it soaked through the pita, making the bread fall apart and I was left with a mound of messy meat, cheese, dressing, and soggy bread. Logistical fail. The flavors ideally would go well together, but given that I had to eat through a mound of sprouts sans dressing before I got to the meat and the cheese and the dressing, it wasn’t really… working.
The boy’s reuben failed a bit better in the «holding it together» department, but he’s a volume eater. Hence, I braced myself for a hungry tantrum post-​lunch.
I mean, I suppose its a cool concept and something different. Neat, clean space with a cute little courtyard and picnic table. But not a place you’d regularly want to go for lunch or if you are starving and still want to keep it under $ 20.

What drew us in to Grahamwich was the fabulous press it got in a «Best Grilled Cheese in the US» Yahoo article last month. Of the handful of raved about hot ‘n cheesy spots, the only Chicago one was Grahamwich!
I went from being super excited to try this stop’s grilled cheese sammich to super disappointed once I consumed it. Cheesy? Yes. Filling? Yes. But overall, I felt like I could whip up a more satisfying and gourmet grilled cheese lunch at home with my fave combo of havarti, sliced pears, and grape jelly. Graham’s $ 7 grilled cheese was ordinary and lacked some stellar, crusty bread and… an extra oomph like bacon… or prosciutto… like the original article stated it had.
Their sammich menu has over a handful of options, unique flavors of pop are offered, and you can even get soft serve ice cream (with nutella!) here. I liked how they offer pastries and baked goods from Bleeding Heart Bakery (shout out!) too, but disliked the whopping $ 4 price tag for french press coffee (which tasted diluted).

Five stars all the way, baby! This place knocked the «wich» off the «Graham». This fool knows how to make a quality brown paper bag lunch. I enjoyed half of a Waldorf Chicken sandwich $ 8. The candied walnuts were such a surprise and the bread was perfectly soft, but held onto the goods.
We enjoyed a bag of G’wich Popcorn $ 3 (small) (but there’s a deal on FourSquare for a free bag with purchase!). That popcorn is right up there with Garrett’s. Totally unique, and irresistible! Your mouth explodes with truffle oil, sea salt, chopped chives, cracked pepper and grated parmesan!
The décor was chic farmhouse style, but minimal seating! We came at 1pm on Monday afternoon and there was no line! Maybe we just got lucky?
I loved their pickles $ 3 (small), because every sandwich needs a pickle on the side! Sipped on a diet coke and passed on the desserts! I must come back on my next trip!

Awesome Grilled cheese = Grahamwhich.
If you like grilled cheese, this is your place. Really good grilled cheese here. Wisconsin cheddar, Italian prosciutto, tomato marmalade, and cheese curds make this a luscious sandwhich.
Also tried the pulled Pork BBQ sandwich with pork belly. Root beer, creamy coleslaw, dill picked and corn bread. it was just ok. A little dry. Expected more flavor and juiciness from the pork belly.
Other things that I tried included the popcorn w/​parmesean and truffle oil (just ok, a little stale), salad (good but nothing special), vanilla bean soft served with warm nutella, caramelized banana, and marshmallow fluff (pretty good).
I would go back just for the grilled cheese but otherwise a bit pricey and everyone else is just ok.

We decided to give Grahamwich a second chance after hearing about their April 1^st menu and price changes. (I was at first skeptical that this might have been an April fools joke, but I was wrong… phew!)
I was pleasantly surprised at how the sandwich prices were lowered by a few dollars and there seemed to be a bit more variety on the menu. I tried the ice cream for the first time too (cinnamon w/​apple) and it was delicious.
Negatives:
It was sort of gross to see the waitstaff touching the doors, the register, and running their hands through their hair and not wearing any gloves, and then touching the food. This was my biggest complaint. I hate saying this about the workers there, as they were all very friendly-​but I caught one of the guys picking his beard and then making a sandwich. Sort of gross.
One more negative:
The popcorn still has too much truffle oil on it.
To sum up:
I’d probably go back if I was in the area but wouldn’t go out of my way to get there.