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.

Road Trip!

. . . because even New Carlisle is a road trip.

The motto for Wot-A-Dog is "A Taste You Can't Get Anywhere Else!". Assuming that the taste is positive, should that not be the motto for every restaurant?

Wot-A-Dog is a drive-in root beer stand that . . . wait for it . . . makes its own root beer. Honestly, I thought that the root beer was okay, but sometimes you just have to give a lot of points for originality. As you can see above, Wot-A-Dog has plenty of originality.

This really is a great place to visit. There are only so many root beer stands around (including the Root Beer Stand in Dayton) and they should be prized before people think that Sonic developed the concept. People think that the benefit of the drive-in is that you don't have to get out of the car. The real beauty is that usually your car seat is more comfortable than a restaurant seat. Plus, there's a novelty to it.

The food was great at Wot-a-dog. I would highly recommend the . . . . Rebel Burger. I was going to have a hot dog that night so I didn't go for the obvious choice because this looked so interesting. The Rebel Burger is "hamburger & sausage patties w/Rebel Sauce, tomato slice, & American cheese." The Rebel Sauce seemed to be some type of Thousand Island dressing. What was especially wonderful was the hamburger patty combined with the sausage patty. Why are we so against combining beef and pig products together? There is a beautiful symmetry in combining two of the HOF meats. The sausage's spiciness was a great complement to the hamburger patty. I'm looking forward to trying this combination at other restaurants and in my own kitchen.

I did try a hot dog and a corn dog. Both were very good. I will definitely get a Foot Long Coney on my next visit. In fact, the menu is very complete. There are 8 different hot dog choices and 8 different burger choices, plus some other choices. There are also 14 different sides.

As I mentioned already, Wot-a-Dog serves its own root beer. It must be popular because you can get it in a one gallon jug so that you can pour it yourself in a frosted mug. The mugs go especially well with the root beer floats that they serve. They also have on the menu a variety of shakes, etc. but they only have vanilla or chocolate ice cream. I think that its funny that a menu will have 5 toppings listed but only two types of ice cream.

Wot-a-Dog closes down for the year on Sept. 15th. It is a great restaurant and a must-stop destination if you are driving through New Carlisle. It definitely is a "taste you can't get anywhere else."