For Rose in Dillon. The Real Hotel in Cars.

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here it is!

San Bernardino Cheese Steaks — the sequel

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welcome to san bernardino

The Delaware Cheese Steak Show, San Bernardino edition.

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the quest continues

The latest Delaware Cheese Steak Contoversy

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The Delaware Cheese Steak Wars. part 1.

Good cheese steaks need great bread. Delaware Cheese steaks.

Well, we pretty much put that controversy to bed.

Stopping in Pizza Pro in Hockessin for a cheese steak, we got a sandwich that was chopped mighty fine and tasted mighty good.

But before eating it, I finally had to ask the guy behind the counter: “What kind of crazy person doesn’t like cheese on his cheesesteak?”

Because that is how my brother Dave eats them. “I don’t want to get in the middle of that,” quoth he.

“He’s from California,” said my brother to the counter guy. And that was that.

Cheese Steaks and the Secret to the Universe.

The quest for the excellent cheese steak took us today to Capriatti’s in Hockessin.

We started out looking for an excellent cheese steak, my brother Dave and I. We ended up finding the secret to the universe instead. Which often happens going to and from a good cheese steak.

The cheese steak first. Of course everyone in Delaware knows Capriatti’s. It started out in a small front room in Little Italy, and now is all over the place. Even Vegas, where they have something like 27 stores.

They are not good because they are big. They are big because they are good, especially Turkey subs.

As we rolled into Capriatti’s, my brother and I talked about an important issue of the day: To chop, or not to chop.

At its dreaded enemy, Casapula’s, they do not chop their steaks into fine bits before cooking.  Whenever you have this discussion with someone from Delaware, their voices drop and their brows furrow.

“So what’s better,” I asked my brother Dave, older by seven years, “chopped or not?”

Dave is kind of careful with his opinions, except for the time I threw a piece of popcorn at my other brother Denny at his house. Dave did not like that, and told me so about five times over the next three months.

I denied it all.

This time was no exception: Dave was hoarding his opinions on whether steak sandwiches with cheese should be chopped. So on the way out I asked the cashier.

But before he could answer, Dave swooped in with an opinion: “Colin — he’s not going to tell you anything other than what they do here.”  And the tone of voice was kind of like the time he and my brother Kevin tried to explain what ‘walking’ was in basketball.

I didn’t understand. He was exasperated.

Undeterred, I pressed on, looking at the cashier for assistance. “I like it chopped fine. Real fine,” he said. “That way they just melt in your mouth and the flavor just bursts.”

That made sense.

During lunch, we watched photos of Dave and his family on my MacBook Pro. I’m digitzing my dad’s family photo collection and at 3500 pictures some as old as 1920, I’m about half way through.

Dave is in about 100 or so. And his kids are another couple of hundred. The IPhoto program sorts them quite effortlessly and so we watched photos of Dave that he has not seen since they were taken — even before he started to become exasperated with me lack of basketball instsincts.

Truth be told — as i said on the radio last night — I was always the best basketball player in the family. I didn’t get any argument either.

So after completing my now daily investigation of the art of the cheese steak, we moved out into the strip mall.

“Let’s head down to the pet shop,” I said. “I want to see if they have one of those devices that help you sling a ball a long way away so your dog will take longer to find it.”

They did.

And 30 minutes later I was effortlessly tossing that ball three times further than I had without it.

Zara the dog loved it.  On a secret of the universe kind of level. Which was a good day’s work for a couple of cheese steak eaters.

Health benefits of Cheese Steaks in the Year of the Tiger.

So I’m in California and my lower back starts hurting. Stabbing pain and all that. So the lovely Lily takes me to a Chinese doctor.

So every day for a week or so, I go to his house. There I stick my feet in a bucket of hot water for about 15 minutes — i lost track of time because i was listening to the Golden Compass on my IPod.

Then I go into his office, where he places electrodes on my neck and back, as well as my wrists and ankles.

Pretty soon a mild volume of electricity is going through my neck and lower back, but not anywhere else.

Then for the next 45 minutes, he basically tortures the bottom of my feet with hard massage slash accupuncture.

The more it hurt, the more I needed it, he said. I was OK with that.

“You need to eat less meat,” he told me about 10 minutes into our first session. “It hurts your memory.”  Of course he said this in Chinese so I’m really reporting this all second hand.

Then his wife gave me a piece of paper with the names of three really terrible diseases on it.  After much discussion, they wanted me to know that I had those diseases.

Oh great. Hey, I knew my back hurt a little, but cerebral palsy?

Even so, I didn’t worry about it. The next day I figured out they were not saying I had those diseases, just that they treat them.

Relieved nevertheless.

I did about 7 sessions but he and Lily said it would take 15.

My back did not really get better, though I do intend to finish the treatments next time I go back to Cali — and find another book for my Ipod.

But I made it back to Delaware where my back got better. Still a bit tender, but better.

My brother Dave gave me a few tips about sleeping and using pillows which seemed to work.

But we were eating a cheesesteak at the time at my favorite Delaware sandwich shop, Casapulas.

So was it Dave, or the Chinese doctor, or the Cheesesteak?

I don’t remember.

Why we need a Delaware cheese steak blog

So I’m out in California talking about Delaware’s great contribution to Western Culture: The Cheese Steak.

“Do they really put cheese on meat in Delaware?” asked Lily. And she looked at me and I looked at her and we both tried to figure out if the other was kidding.

We were not, to both of our surpises.

“Yes,  they put cheese on steak sandwiches, and we used to eat them every day,” quoth I.

And that is when I knew I had a lot of work to do.

Delaware Cheese Steak Eater at Casapulas in Hockessin.