MERIDEN — There are some things you just don't tell people — PIN number for your ATM card, for example, or the bad grade you got in your freshman math class in college.

For Paul Duberek, owner of Ted's Restaurant on Broad Street, the cheese he pours on his famous steamed hamburgers falls right into that category. He is not playing coy about the whole thing; it is a conscious business decision. "It is a personal thing. A lot of people want to do what we do because they think it is easy," Duberek said.

So when George Motz, a Brooklyn filmmaker who featured Ted's in his documentary "Hamburger America," wanted to get a hunk of Vermont cheddar for a class at the Institute of Culinary Education in Manhattan, he had to drive all the way up to Meriden to pick it up Tuesday. Not that Motz, a hamburger aficionado of the highest order, minded at all. He periodically makes the approximately 200-mile round trip from Brooklyn for a piece of Duberek's handiwork. "He'd better not tell anybody. I don't want him to," Motz joked before he settled in for a steamed cheeseburger with ketchup and mustard.

About 15 years ago, Duberek had to change the kind of cheese he uses on the burgers because the cheesemaker he was using went out of business. It was the only major change made in the product over the past 44 years. "It took me a year to find the right thing," he said. "It is a purposefully aged type of cheese that we have come up with over a long period of time. You can get this same type of cheese other places and it would just turn orange in the steamer box."

Motz, a bespectacled, mutton-chopped young man, excitedly bantered with Duberek and the countermen. He plans to make steamers for the class in a small steam cabinet Duberek gave him in appreciation for including him in the film. Just as his burger was about to be served, he ran out to his car to retrieve his camera. Motz photographs all of his burgers before he eats them.