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Okay, it sounds ridiculous. It is ridiculous. A ridiculous flexing of privilege and vulgar display of temperament, perhaps too specific a look into my own soul. But, at the time…

Let me back up.

Dateline: Missoula. Late November 2022. I was there with Modest Mouse for their kickoff to the Lonesome Crowded West tour. A week before Thanksgiving.

I’d deplaned from California into frigid, snowy darkness—a typical late fall Montana evening. A driver met me at the curb just outside the terminal, but not before I’d wiped out twice, landing with a crunch in a pile of bags and Pelican cases full of camera gear. It was clear my icy sidewalk skills forged over my many years spent living along the coast of New England had faded after just a year in Sonoma’s sunny climate. I was cold, tired, and a little drunk, but also verging on already hungover. Thriving, as the kids say.

All I wanted to do was get to my hotel room and pass out face down on some bleach-stiff sheets. At last, I checked in and shambled for the elevator.

That’s when a text from Isaac, Modest Mouse’s frontman, came through, “Oxford Club. Best cheesesteak I’ve ever had. Now.”

Never one to not hasten heart disease’s inevitable advance, I ditched my luggage and headed back into the cold night, the waffle soles of my woefully inadequate footwear shuffling like tiny telemark skis across the sheer pavement of the sidewalk. Swirling snow dervishes conspired as I made my way toward the Ox’s glowing red sign.

The Oxford Saloon and Café is, in every sense of the word, a Missoula institution. Established in 1883, its website proudly proclaims to have been “open 24 hours a day for so many years that there are no keys for the entrances.”

Located on the busy corner of North Higgins and West Pine streets in the heart of downtown, those unlockable doors open to a wooden saloon with enough archaic rifles on display to take back the Alamo. Past the bar, the place transitions into a diner with a counter and a large open grill. Isaac was the lone customer, straddling a stool and talking to the line cook.

Having lived in Missoula in both 1994 and 2002, I hazily recalled having come through those doors many times before. I think I even have a vague memory of their allegedly legendary chicken fried steak. But I’d never contemplated their cheesesteak or, as the menu called it, the “Philly.” Even though Isaac isn’t prone to hyperbole, I wasn’t holding my breath on some sort of mind-blowing gastronomical experience. The Ox is, after all, a place whose menu proudly proclaims that they serve bowls of Campbell’s soup.

Whelp, fuck me and my coastal elitism. After just one bite I knew the bar by which all other cheese and steak sandwiches in my life would be judged had been raised. Hell, it was blown completely out of the stratosphere.

The presentation was innocuous enough: perfectly grilled bread, oozy cheese, chunks of green peppers, browned sheets of beef emitting theatrical curls of steam. It’s when the car hit the garage that the magic happened. I’ll spare you the erotic undertones of chewing and swallowing and tasting descriptors, just suffice it to say that everything came together in an “Aha” moment that would’ve had Anthony Bourdain creaming his designer denim in delight.

A happy, full, fatty glow floated me back to the hotel above the perilous streets and wrapped me in a blanket of carnally carnivorous satisfaction. I slept like an angel (yes, vegans, an angel of death) and awoke with the strength of, if not ten men, at least three or four moderately fit middle-aged people.

Modest Mouse’s first actual show was still a day away, so, after watching rehearsal for a while in the Wilma Theatre, naturally I made my way back to the Ox. I wasn’t merely hungry. I had to know: was it simply set and setting?

A chance rendezvous of environmental, physical, and emotional happenstance that created the perfect steak and cheese sandwich eating situation? Or was it really that good?

Yeah, well, it was. Did I eat two? No, of course not.