Artisanal Fromagerie and Bistro

Ryan, the manager that took me to Morimoto last year, invited me to Artisanal last week to celebrate the end of a project we were both on (the project ended a long time ago but our schedules didn’t match until recently). We chose Artisanal because I’d never visited but heard good things from a coworker and Ryan agreed to go because he’s had their cheesecake and thought it would be a good choice for lunch. We started off with a little bread:

It was just the two of us but we wanted to try a lot of things on the menu, so we decided to order the macaroni and cheese as an appetizer (in addition to the cheese sampler we ordered). The macaroni and cheese came with a side salad:

The macaroni and cheese had a nice baked crust and large chunks of prosciutto. The combination of cheeses was really sinful and delicious – we finished about half of it and were already stuffed! Too bad we ordered two sandwiches AND a cheese sampler:

We ordered three different types of cheese, my favorite being the Coupole. I almost bought some to take home, but I stopped myself because I’m trying to be more healthy (AFTER this lunch).

For our main courses, we ordered two different sandwiches. Ryan ordered a grilled cheese sandwich with English Cheddar, Smoked Bacon & Apple:

The only thing the sandwich was missing was a nice bowl of tomato soup! It was a great grilled cheese sandwich (it should be at $15.50!).

I ordered a Berkshire pork sandwich with pickled cabbage and muenster cheese because I’m a sucker for Berkshire pork and I happen to love muenster cheese:

Berkshire pork/pulled pork sandwiches can be really great if they’re done correctly (see The Spotted Pig). Artisanal’s sandwich, however, was really terrible. Like, absolutely disgusting; the pork was really dry and the pickled cabbage just tasted sour. It kind of ruined my Artisanal experience, actually.

On the way out, we stopped by the fromagerie:

We also ordered a cheesecake to go (so we could share with people in the office AND because we couldn’t eat another bite) and the cheesecake was absolutely amazing. It comes with caramel sauce, a pecan-shortbread crust, and pecan praline crunch that was so f-ing delicious. You can order them online here. On our walk back, Ryan and I were trying to decide whether Artisanal was 3.5 Grace Face’s or 4 Grace Face’s. We decided it was 3.5 because my sandwich was pretty gross. If I go back, I’m going for another slice of their amazing cheesecake!