By JONES PURCELL
April 1995, Big Shout Magazine

Why did I say I would write this article?

I think I was thinking of going into each of these places waving my Big Shout and getting some free food. Also, I’m temporarily unemployed and need the whopping 35 bucks I’m going to get for writing this. (Clean, green dinero please, Gregg — had a hell of a time cashing that last check, even at the bank it was drawn on.)

Onward, fellow gastronomes, into the fray…

MALIN’S: is a family-owned market on 896 in Newark. The ham salad rules! I don’t even like ham salad, but this is something very special, handmade on the premises. The stuff is snapped up by aficionados almost as quickly as it is made. In fact, I have never been able to buy it on Sunday; it’s always gone. So what is it? It’s ham butts chopped fine and mixed according to an old family recipe. Try it on rye with a freshly-sliced Kosher dill and lots of sweet peppers — sublime.

KNUCKLEHEADS: The bar on Washington Street in Wilmington is not just another place to wear your baseball hat backwards and boogey to ersatz Grateful Dead. These guys make my favorite sandwich in Delaware — The Tasty One: chicken breast with melted cheese, grilled onions, and green peppers with a mild, but flavorful salsa on a bun. One is tempted to use a knife and fork, but go ahead and pick it up. Let it drip, let it rip. Eat the damn thing, you won’t be sorry.

LA TOLTECA: the Mexican restaurant on 202 is an old Roy Rogers across the highway from four acres of homogenized, sanitized chain restaurants. You can see them while you eat. Although the place looks like it was painted by a blind epileptic, the food is excellent. It helps to speak a little Spanish, the music is Mexican. My favorite is the chili relleno rice and beans — the relleno is a large chili pepper stuffed with cheese, delicious and inexpensive. Try it with a couple of Negro Modelos — a dark Mexican beer — then top it off with a Marlboro. Yes, you can smoke there. It’s all cooked in lard, so this is a once-a-month kind of thing.

BULLSEYE: I have never had a bad roast beef sandwich at either location. Hand-carved with horseradish and hot peppers on every table. My thing is to have one around five o’clock at the Kirkwood Highway location, where I can watch Hard Copy and Inside Edition on a giant TV and catch up on my O.J. news. The parsley potatoes on the side, a pitcher of beer — kick it, homey!

JAKE’S BURGERS: The simple truth, they grind their own meat — a real American classic, and cheap, too. Seven dollars will stuff you and your insignificant other. The food is served by sullen college boys that look like steroid abusers; so call ahead, grab the bag, and leave before those bullet-head Saxon mothers’ sons jump over the counter and kill your alternative ass.

Now if you think I don’t like seafood, hold up a minute. One of life’s greatest (and cheapest) pleasures is to sit at the WATERFRONT by the bay in Dewey Beach and watch the tourists ride jet skis and eat a quarter pound of shrimp for a dollar — served by extremely tanned and usually hungover collegiates down for the summer. Don’t forget to tip the waitrons, condoms aren’t cheap.

There’s a place I have downtown. The food’s okay, but the menu slays me. Deep in the bowels of Newark lies BUCK’S, a neophyte, pseudo JAKE’S. My favorites are the pulled chicken and pulled pork. I’m waiting for the flogged dolphin and spanked monkey!

Well, that’s it and if you don’t agree with me, go ahead and compile your own list. That’s where the fun is — researching. Excuse me, I’ve got to get some Rolaids and a six-pack of Maalox.