Ultimate SD Grilled Cheese: Sunny Side Kitchen
Pair your grilled cheese sandwich with a cup of soup and it’s our Lunch Special. Available every day but Saturday.
The Best Grilled Cheese in San Diego has been found at Sunny Side Kitchen, a mom and pop shop in Downtown Escondido. Sunny Side Kitchen has also been awarded Best Breakfast Sandwich In America and also one of the Top 100 Restaurants You Should Visit by Yelp. San Diego Magazine readers also just picked Sunny Side Kitchen as Best Breakfast for all of San Diego.
The readers of San Diego’s Union-Tribune newspaper awarded Sunny Side Kitchen’s grilled cheese sandwich THE BEST.
Grilled cheese sandwiches are about as simple as food gets. Bread, cheese, butter and heat! But at Sunny Side Kitchen, the humble grilled cheese is transformed. Voted Best Grilled Cheese in the county by the readers of the San Diego Union-Tribune (July 2022), this fan favorite is the basis of a majority of the panini on the menu. And since it features some of the best ingredients available anywhere, it’s worth eating every day!
Our daughter Larissa’s original recipe (circa 2012) for our award winning grilled cheese sandwich.
Why did Sunny Side Kitchen decide to make grilled cheese? Well, co-owner Bob is famous in the family for the grilled cheese sandwiches he cooked up for his daughters while they were growing up. Kate’s daughter, Larissa, is all about the cheeses and wanted to showcase an outstanding combination of flavors. She worked with Bob and her mom to develop Sunny Side Kitchen’s now famous gourmet grilled cheese.
Larissa’s grilled cheese is gourmet, but not too fancy for everyone to enjoy. She combines two creamy white cheeses, Havarti and Muenster, to create a decadent interior. For the bread? Only the best will do. Artisan sourdough from San Diego bakery Bread & Cie gets a good slather of melted butter before the cheeses are introduced. Then there’s more cheese! Shredded Parmesan is sprinkled onto the outside of the bread to add another layer of flavor and texture. Add a dash of Italian seasoning and it's ready for the panini press and then your plate. Yum!
Sunny Side Kitchen’s gourmet grilled cheese turns into one of the nation’s best breakfast sandwiches with the addition of egg, bacon and avocado. Need more protein? Add chicken to the gourmet grilled cheese for the signature Tuscan Chicken Panini (there’s a bit of yummy roasted tomato aioli sauce, some sun-dried tomatoes and spinach in there as well).