Why I Chose Grilled Cheese

Culture shock--when you don't know which line to stand in to order food.

Tonight I treated myself to dinner at The Coffee Shop at Earlham College, the undergraduate campus next to ESR.  Between burgers, chicken sandwiches, wraps, and other options, I decided on a wrap.   

The Coffee Shop is similar to PLNU's Point Break Cafe (now split between "Point Break," which prepares food, and "Bobby B's Coffee Co," which prepares drinks).  For starters, both are owned by Sodexho, and both have the oval "155°" sign hanging above their grills.  In addition, the workers at The Coffee Shop wear the uniforms PBC workers used to wear, maroon Polo shirts covered with black aprons, and black caps.  Plus, the guy making the sandwiches tonight looked like one of my friends who worked at the Peebs.

The difference, I discovered, is that if one wants a wrap, one must order it in the other line, just south of the line I was in, where you can also order Subway sandwiches.  So I waited in the Subway line, looking around the cafe.  Above me was a wooden loft with a computer, students sitting at tables and a lounge area with couches, and framed photos hanging on a wall.  In the center of the cafe, someone rotated in a round station preparing drinks:  fruit/ice cream smoothies, tea, coffee. 

During my first two years at PLNU, I worked at the PBC.  Making drinks was probably the most challenging task, especially during a lunch rush, when the line would extend beyond the cafe doors, almost into the bookstore.  The person behind the cashier would thrust you empty cups of various sizes and transparencies, and with hieroglyphs: 

S/B/PC
Y
W/C
Catherine

That, by the way, would have been translated into "Make a strawberry, banana, and pina colada smoothe with yogurt and topped with whip cream.  No, not ice cream--yogurt.  When you're done, put it on the counter and say loudly, 'Catherine. . . Catherine!'  And HURRY!"

The smoothies were easier than coffee, though.  At first, I could never remember how to make a shot, and once I did, I couldn't remember how many shots you needed, when to pour the shots in the cup, when to pour the hot milk, when to make the milk hot, how to make the milk hot, and what the difference was between an espresso, an Americano, a capucchino, and a double-shot decaf mocho latte Americano.  I eventually got the hang of it--after strange looks from my manager, Jon.

The grill was my main base.  That's where I learned how to tell the burger is ready to be flipped:  "When the blood is gathered in a circle about the size of a quarter," Jon said.  That's where I made salandwiches so good they took them off the menu, to keep people cliffhanging.  Also, that's where I learned to make a grilled cheese sandwich.

So tonight, when it was finally my turn to order, I changed my mind from a wrap to a grilled cheese sandwich, in honor of those days. 

"You have to order that over there," the worker said.  She pointed further southward, to a dark corner of the cafe with a cash register. 

I made my order, handed it to the guy who looks like my friend, he made the sandwich and said, "Grilled cheese!"  I thanked him and ate.  The Swiss cheese hung on as long as it could before being tugged off the sandwich.  There were no seats by the windows out which to smell the Pacific Ocean, but my booth was fine enough.  I'll get the hang of this.