Love Grilled Cheese? One-item restaurants dedicated to this comfort food are popping up all over the country. Picture courtesy of fd.Ever had a food craving for one thing, and one thing only? We all have, and it is usually for our favorite comfort foods, such as grilled cheese, chocolate, or my personal vice, bacon. Sometimes the desire for such foods is so strong that we will hunt around town for a restaurant or grocery store that sells what we long for. Recently, restaurateurs have used this knowledge to their advantage, (and ours), by introducing more and more restaurants that mainly sell one type of treat – a concept known as one-item restaurants.

The concept of one-item restaurants is nothing new – pizza parlors, burger stands, and ice cream shops have been around for years. Yet, the food industry is now expanding their horizons to feature comfort food items as their star dishes.

For example, The Melt, a chain of restaurants in Northern California, features many variations of the classic grilled cheese. However, the menu features sandwiches that are way more sophisticated than the butter-laden cheese product concoctions most of our mothers made for us when we were children. On my next trip to San Francisco, I plan to try The Melt’s Brie and Apple Honey on Country French…YUM! In Idaho, you can find the Bacon Restaurant and Coffee Shop, where the owner expects to cook about 150,000 pieces of bacon each year! That number even includes tempeh bacon, which is a vegetarian menu option made from soybeans.

So the next time you have a craving for a particular treat, find out if there is a restaurant entirely dedicated to the food you desire. You may just be pleasantly surprised.