Their day job may be slinging lattes at the Flatiron District's Birch Coffee, but this past Saturday co-owners Jeremy Lyman and Paul Schlader went looking for gooey cheese glory at 1st 8th Annual Grilled Cheese Invitational in Los Angeles.

Lyman and Schlader opened Birch Coffee, located in the Gershwin Hotel, last October, and while the focus was naturally on the brew, they quickly found that the three grilled cheeses on their food menu were coming in a close second. "The grilled cheese sandwiches have been the number-one-selling item on our menu since we opened," explains Schlader. So they decided to compete in L.A.'s sandwich Olympics.

Looking something like a chaotic-family-BBQ-meets–Comic Con (as Lyman put it), the Grilled Cheese Invitational is an ode to melted cheese on bread. The competition is split into professional and amateur divisions, with three sandwich-flavor categories: Missionary (the classic bread, butter and cheese), Kama Sutra (anything goes) and Honey Pot (sweet). Judges wander the rows of open stations, tasting not to some pre-set order, but to their own greasy-fingered whims. As a result, half the competition is just getting noticed.

"What we learned is that you have to be a hustler with these judges," said Schlader. "The judging was completely subjective!"

Armed with cheese from Murray's and bread from both Sullivan St. Bakery and Amy's Bread, Team Birch braved eight hours in the Southern California sun, as the city's soul representative, to show to left coast how it's done. In the end they took home an Honorable Mention in the professional Kama Sutra category for their "Sexy Asparagi." Made with Amy's olive loaf, the sandwich is slathered in a home-made white truffle butter and filled with grilled asparagus cooked in lemon zest, olive oil, garlic and white wine and topped with a mint truffle oil and asparagus salad.

"We kinda know what we need to do next year," says Lyman, who already plans on going back for the gold. When asked for an inside tip on what makes the perfect grilled cheese, Lyman offered up these words of wisdom, "As much as it is about the cheese, the way the bread and the butter are grilled... that will make or break your sandwich."