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A simple truth supports baker Greggs’ decision to make it a centrepiece of its menu. The toastie is us, and we are the toastieIt goes down like the devil in leather trousers. Soft, oozy, all butter and cheese held in the warming embrace of toast the colour of David Dickinson’s tan. It has probably taken about a week off my life expectancy but it’s worth it – for there is no finer food in Christendom than the cheese toastie. And it is not just me who thinks so. Ask the good people at Greggs. Traditionally purveyors of pasty and pork, they now have a new menu, and the star of the show is the cheese and honey mustard toastie.The toastie is a familiar friend. It can be posh, it can be cheap. You can pay £12.50 at the Wigmore in central London – if you are crackers – or make it at home for about 20p. You are a saviour when I still need something warm. You can be béchamel-ed and truffled, you can be made of gruyère and, at Borough Market’s Kappacasein, you might be Ogleshield, the West Country’s answer to raclette. You can be American cheese, flimsy, plastic and with all the depth of a penny. You can be adorned with gherkins and pickles and scattered with alliums of every variety. You can cuddle shallots and take on leeks. You can be married to marmite and have an affair with stilton.In these straitened times you give joy but cost little. You can be made in a toaster, turned on its side, the cheese first placed in a well in the bread so that it doesn’t spill over the edges – I know this because at university I became a past-master at it. Mercifully, I was not electrocuted, nor did I burn the house down. But on safety grounds I wouldn’t recommend it. Not least because I don’t want to be sued when a row of terrace houses goes up in smoke in Clapham. Not least because you can eliminate the risk with a bespoke toastie bag. Continue reading...