Grate expectations: cheese toasties are having a moment, and I’m all for it | Lauren O'Neill

5 hours ago 1

A dispatch from the menus of the capital’s fancier pubs, Instagram restaurants and wine bars: there’s a new favourite dish in town. Though maybe “new” is the wrong word. Cropping up in the types of establishments where you’ll easily pay a fiver for olives is the humble but universally beloved cheese toastie.

I’d call it a renaissance, but that would ignore the fact that the toastie is and has been for decades a staple of busy lunches, sick days and CBA dinners, when all you’re after is instant satisfaction. Let’s say instead, then, that the cheese toastie has had a bit of a culinary glow-up.

I’ve seen them recently on lots of different menus across London. Bar Levan in Peckham lists a croque monsieur, while the Library, a swish cocktail bar in Maida Vale, promises a straight-up toastie dripping with strong cheese, plus tart chutney served on the side for dipping.

Elsewhere, Farringdon’s Quality Wines – whose head chef, Nick Bramham, is something of a trendsetter across the capital when it comes to sharing menus – has also had a croque monsieur on the pass (replete with provolone, Brie de Meaux, Prince de Paris ham and truffles), while the Knave of Clubs in Shoreditch has devoted a whole section of its menu to toasties. Marceline in Canary Wharf recently held a croque monsieur competition, where chefs competed to have their sandwich crowned top of the croques.

If you ask me, this is all excellent news, first because who has ever refused hot molten cheese between slices of crisp bread after one to three drinks? Second, the sudden prevalence of the toastie in restaurants signals a sea change among the attitudes of people designing more “upmarket” menus.

Where once it felt like these were lists of dishes detailing what chefs thought the rest of us should want to eat – plates of meats with uncommon provenances (sorry to say, these tend to pretty much taste like premium supermarket salami), or patés en croûte that take dozens of steps to create – now it’s more like they’re catering to what the majority of people actually want. Cheese toasties and croque monsieurs represent accessible, widely enjoyed flavours, and while I’d agree with the purists who say the two are not the same, the comfort-food sentiments they convey are inarguably pretty similar.

Either way, it’s reasonable to ask: why the change in outlook on small plates menus? As with most things concerning food and lifestyle trends, we can probably look to social media. While quality ingredients are as important as ever, the ability to grab attention now plays a huge part in the success of a dish, particularly in the Instagram economy, where a great photo can cause a viral sensation. The XXL three-cheese toastie at the Wigmore in central London, for example, has been a staple on the menu for years, foreshadowing the 2025 trend, largely because it looks so impressive.

Not all of the toasties I’m thinking of here are extra-extra-large, but they do appeal to people’s sense of novelty and nostalgia – both of which hit hard on social media. Dishes like cheese toasties stand out on a posh menu precisely because they typically feel so ordinary – and in recent times, everything from Viennetta to bread and butter pudding has been given the restaurant treatment.

Chefs and potential customers scrolling through the algorithm get excited by new twists on familiar dishes, or the opportunity to make or try an “ultimate” version of a classic: look at Quality Wines’ superlative version of the croque, for example. As such, the cheese toastie boom feels like a symptom of that impulse – a bit like an updated version of the gourmet burger boom of the early 2000s.

Ultimately, cheese toasties popping up on the menus of wine bars and posh pubs is a positive thing. This is a hearty, filling dish, which, let’s be honest, feels like better value for money than a plate of fancy charcuterie. Plus, it also seems to signal movement in the small plates world. Of course, where a bougie wine bar is found, a devilled egg won’t be far behind, but these places are now beginning to serve a few more dishes that cater to the appetites that see us craving kebabs and chips after a night of drinking. Life, as they say, is all about balance.