Who is Charlie?

Charlie's Imports is the best deli in Dayton. Let's break this down with bullets.

• There are freezers full of drink options for you to get what you want. There is no venti option at Charie's. If you want a bigger drink, you just grab the larger can or bottle. You can even get a Yoo-Hoo, assuming your mother is okay with that.


• Similarly, you can also get your choice of chips and other sandwich friends. Pringles, Doritos, weird cookies? They are all there.


• The best way to order is to get your drink so that you can drink it while you decide what to order. Then order your sandwich. Finally, pick out your sandwich friends while you wait for the awesome food to arrive.


• The sandwiches are brilliantly conceived. They utilize baked ham, Bavarian ham, Capicolla ham, steak, turkey, honey roast turkey, mesquite smoked turkey, lamb, corn beef, and roast beef. That is every color in the meat rainbow! (I'm wearing a feed bag and sitting in the pot of gold at the end of that rainbow.) This is the sandwich recipe for the Hatch: Honey roast turkey, provo-lone cheese, egg slices, tomato, lettuce with Dijon honey mustard. All of that is on a Kaiser or onion roll. You will not see that innovation at Subway. Yeah, that's right, I called out Jared AND Michael Phelps.


• The sandwiches are executed as well as they are planned. They use good quality ingredients.


• I don't have a favorite sandwich. There are 27 sandwiches and probably 3 different ways (more or less) to do each sandwich so therefore there are 1,486, 380 possible sandwiches to chose from. I absolutely do have a favorite soup, the Chicken Spaetzle. Actually, that is the only soup
  that I've had but it is an instant favorite with me. It should be renamed Grandma's Chicken Spaetzle.


• As you go to the dining area, you pass by other "imports" of some food items, beer and liqueur. It is an odd collection but it adds to the charm.
  There are more groceries in the seating area and some German magazines
  that look old. It makes a great environment because it makes it . . .
  Charlie's.


• The prices are the best in town. Many people think that the best thing about Charlie's is the prices but that is not fair to the food. They are great but it is not cheap food.

Finally, this quirky little dive has a web site, http://www.charliesdeli-catering.com/, that has everything that a prospective customer would need to place an order. Every local restaurant needs a web site that makes it a breeze for your customers to order carry-out lunches. Actually, there are a lot of things about Charlie's that other Dayton restaurants should copy.