The countdown has officially begun. It is T-minus ten days until Miami gets a helluva lot cheesier when Ms. Cheezious finally opens its brick-and-mortar location in the MiMo District. Brian Mullins, Fatima Mullins, and M. Christian Dickens are the trio behind the roving grilled-cheese truck, and they've been hard at work testing recipes, curing bacon, and generally getting ready for the next phase of the grilled-cheese revolution.
It begins with their newest menu item: the Ms. Cheezious patty melt.
See also: Ms. Cheezious Opening February 1
You'll want to get your mouth on this thing. It packs an all-beef patty with house-cured bacon and -- wait for it -- chorizo pimento as the binding cheesy agent. If your mouth is open right now, close it, 'cause it'll be a week and change till you can get your hands on this baby.
"We do all grilled cheese, obviously, but we haven't done a patty melt burger yet," Brian Mullins says. "It's a very traditional grilled-cheese item, so we wanted to do it, but not in a traditional way, hence the chorizo pimento."
If you've chased the truck with the girl in the polka-dot bikini, you're well aware that nothing Ms. Cheezious does is traditional. Even the concept itself -- taking the grilled-cheese sandwich and elevating it -- is something some people still can't wrap their heads around.
For the trio behind the operation, however, it was a no-brainer. "We wanted to take something that everyone loved to the next level," Brian says. "Grilled cheese is something that applies from when you're a kid to an adult, when you're feeling down to when you're feeling great, from when you're drunk to when you're on a working lunch. If you like cheese and bread, there's really not a lot of times you don't want to eat that."
And who doesn't like cheese and bread? No one reading this, that's for sure.
Five years after the first truck hit the streets (Ms. Cheezious was first spotted during Art Basel 2010), the original idea still stands: to make the classic favorite fun, interesting, and worth chasing around town. "The line started then and hasn't stopped," Brian says. Of course, the good news is you'll no longer have to follow the truck because you can get the crabby cheese melt, barbecued pork melt, blue and bacon, and croqueta-monsieur with a cold brew at the Ms. Cheezious compound.
"I think our service and food have been consistent from the beginning. We expanded the menu a bit and would have expanded more but were limited in capability, so this is really going to allow us to do more stuff and simply be fully available to people when they have a craving," Brian says. In addition to the patty melt, a handful of other menu items is already in the works. "We travel a lot and know what good food is, so when we're coming up with things, if it doesn't really wow us, we're not going put it out there.
"Everyone wants to be fancy out there," he continues. "We're not trying to be fancy; we just want to be good. It's gonna be the spot for hanging in this neighborhood."
Adds Fatima: "Casual, let your hair down, let it all hang out in MiMo."
Want to be part of the cheesiness? Ms. Cheezious will host a job fair sometime in the next week. Follow Ms. Cheezious on Twitter for more info and to find the trucks' whereabouts till your permanent place of comfort opens in ten days.
Follow Carla on Twitter @ohcarlucha
Follow Short Order on Facebook, on Twitter @Short_Order, and Instagram @ShortOrder.