Socializing Over Grilled Cheese
There are few things in American culinary culture more universally adored than the humble grilled cheese sandwich. Not pizza or even hamburgers can claim the same level of approachability, nostalgia, and comfort as can be found in this most classic of kitchen staples. And for MacKenzie Smith, it’s become a career.
While developing her thesis on the struggles of aging minority populations as a grad school student at Columbia University, Smith desperately sought a creative writing outlet to balance out the scientific stuff she was writing for school. This being ten years or so ago during the advent of the blog, a friend suggested she start one of her own, ideally focused on food. MacKenzie thought to herself – “What can I write about that: a) everybody loves; b) I can afford; and c) is something that I know a lot about?” Living on a student’s budget in New York City, that could mean one thing – grilled cheese sandwiches.
Although she has since expanded into all aspects of food and travel culture, MacKenzie’s Grilled Cheese Social blog focused exclusively on grilled cheese sandwiches centered around a personal narrative a la Sex in the City for the first six years of its existence. Her recipes, then and now, often make use of leftovers, which can get a little crazy, but always at least involve cheese, butter and bread, ingredients nearly anyone has on hand at any particular time. Suffice it to say that in the early days there were more than a few hangover recipes (wink).
Leveraging the blog’s popularity and the universal appeal of the grilled cheese, she went on to host wildly successful grilled cheese pop-ups in the city which eventually took her across the country and even around the world, landed her a gig at Saveur Magazine, and a spot on two Food Network game shows (which she won!).
I learned all this as she prepared for me a grilled cheese sandwich of my own during a pop-up at ABBQ Meat & Drink in Atlantic Beach. The grilled cheese du jour featured shredded Grand Cru Alpine-Style Cheese from Roth Cheese in Wisconsin (one of MacKenzie’s “cheese partners”), fig jam and fresh basil between slices of good old-fashioned Texas Toast slathered in salty butter. “It’s just the best for grilled cheeses,” she explains.
These days, MacKenzie keeps her pop-ups closer to home, which just so happens to be New Smyrna Beach, FL. She relocated there to help run the kitchen at her family’s boutique hotel, the Black Dolphin Inn, where she runs the B&B-style breakfast program. When she does host pop-ups nowadays, it’s often to promote her self-published cookbook which features 10 of the blog’s most popular recipes (all grilled cheeses of course) and 40 new ones, divided by breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Her Instagram account boasts over 50k followers but algorithms and such have made it hard for an “influencer” these days, so she’s shifted her focus to monetizing the blog itself and learned a lot about Google Analytics in the process.
You can follow MacKenzie’s grilled cheese and other food-inspired adventures on her blog and her Instagram. You can also catch her on an all-star edition of Guy’s Grocery Games in early 2020 where she’ll challenge other fellow past Flavortown champions!
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