I love our tipsters. Even when they're looking for work, they think of us when they see something worthy for this blog. An anonymous tipster just sent me this heads up:
“Was job hunting and saw this and thought you would be interested. The Melt is opening Irvine, sometime, somewhere. No info on their website regarding the upcoming location.”
With that nugget I found out that the “somewhere” will be Irvine Spectrum, behind the Dave & Busters, next to Panda Express, replacing CrepeMaker.
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What is The Melt? It's a grilled cheese sandwich shop that already has a slew of outlets in California, including about a half dozen locations in LA, serving simple grilled cheese with tomato soup to something as complex as a “Thanksgiving” grilled cheese with cheddar, carved turkey, “fixins” on sourdough and a sweet corn tortilla soup on the side.
It was founded by Flip Video founder Jonathan Kaplan and boasts a board of directors that includes a former head of retail operations at Apple and Michael Mina, the James Beard award winning chef and restauranteur.
Its hook is a novel system where you can place your orders through your phone or computer, then see where you are in line on an electronic order board at the store.
As for the “sometime”? That remains to be seen. But as our friend found out, they are hiring as we speak. Me, I'm rooting for our mystery tipster to get the job.
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Before becoming an award-winning restaurant critic for OC Weekly in 2007, Edwin Goei went by the alias “elmomonster” on his blog Monster Munching, in which he once wrote a whole review in haiku.