Home of the Rat-Trap

When I think of hometowns my mind always goes to the types of food that you can get there. Now, maybe I just have an unhealthy relationship with food...okay I probably do...but I'm pretty sure most will agree that when we think of a town that just gives us that hometown feeling, it's because it has some epic food!

There are several towns big and small with awesome restaurants, cafes, bakers, and hole-in-the-wall eateries that have made some amazing top ten lists over the years.

I am here to argue that the VERY BEST food you will ever get is in my very small hometown.

I recommend this place to anyone and everyone who will listen, and then warn them to call in and order ahead if you have any hope of getting your lunch order made before they start running out of the key ingredients. This place is always a first come first serve and, trust me, they often run out!

I recommend this place so much, I really wish I started getting a commission off of the number of times I've jabbed on about it!

I bet you are dying to know what it is, right?

It's called the Cheese Shop and it's in such a small town that you could very easily miss it if you aren't looking hard enough.

The Cheese Shop is located in Newcastle, California. A town with a single post office, one stoplight, three stop signs, and some of the best orchards in all of the country.

Newcastle started out as a booming fruit farming community with a train depot taking said yummy fruits from the Produce Bowl of America to its hungry citizens from coast to coast.

It has a rich Native American and Asian history, an elementary school so small it encompasses K-8th grade all on one campus, and a shop that serves a sandwich as you never heard of but will wish you had.

With the I-80 slicing right through it on the way to the Sierra Nevadas and Reno just beyond that, it is a perfect pit stop for any skier or luck-seeker from the Sacramento Valley.

Now, what makes this dinky little deli shop fashioned out of the old railroad fruit shed in the heart of a speck of a town the best place in the whole wide world?

I give you Dutch Crunch Rat Trap:

This heavenly sandwich is packed full of a variety of deli meats, veggies of your choosing, and the top gourmet cheeses of the day, all lovingly tucked in a freshly baked dutch crunch roll.

Seriously guys my mouth is watering looking at this thing!

Nothing can ever compare with the feeling of biting into one of these amazing sandwiches. Now, of course, the Newcastle Cheese Shop offers other options too.

They have a salad with their own house dressing that is nearly the rival to the Rat Trap, and a homemade chili that often gets sold out before the lunch rush is even halfway over.

But if you want an explosion of that homey, feel-good, heaven on earth experience in your life- You have got to get the RAT TRAP!

So when you're thinking of some of the best hometowns you have passed through in your life, and yummy food is the first thing that comes to your mind, I hope you add the Newcastle Cheeses Shop to that list and stop on in for their famous Rat Trap sandwich!