The Philadelphia Cheese Steak: Decoded
I was born and raised in Philadelphia and have always loved what the city offers. Great schools, museums, sports teams (who all try harder so as not to suffer the legendary wrath of its fans) and great food and restaurants.
And in the last 40 years has gained a world wide reputation for its restaurant scene. So I laugh a little when I see the maniacal preoccupationBwith our “street food”, preeminent is the lowly cheesesteak. I say that advisedly as it is, despite its blue collar upbringing, a truly great sandwich.
Whats not to like? Lean beef grilled briefly in oil, (originally lard), a great piece of bread, a slice of cheese, fried onions and eaten on the spot.
Legend has it that Pat Olivieri, who ran a small shop selling hot dogs in the Strawberry Mansion section of north Philly, at the behest of a hungry cabbie friend grilled thin slices of beef, laid it on a fresh baked roll and added chopped grilled onions. The cheese would come later. It was like nothing the cabbie ever tasted and Pat agreed. After that, hot dogs got second billing on the menu.
Advertising gurus say that the first in the marketplace with a new product becomes the most famous. So it is not a surprise that the most famous steak joint, (Philadelphian never refer to a cheesesteak, it is just a steak) in Philly is called Pats still run by the Olivieri family is at Ninth and Passyunk in deep South Philly. There is a Johhny-Come-Lately , Genos which opened years after Pats had already gained its international reputation, and is for tourists, but so is Pats.
My association with cheesesteak history goes way back before it became a phenomenon. I grew up 2 blocks from the original Jims, the one place that has been the favorite for the cognoscenti in Philly almost since it opened in 1939. Pats is respected as the originator and for maintaining its position with style and gratitude. But we natives eat our cheesesteaks from Jims. I grew up 2 blocks from the tiny store that Jims opened on Noble Street in West Philly. Jim Perlingi was a friend of my fathers and his son Jim Jr. “Sonny” was someone I knew and hung out with. Jim was a gentleman as was Sonny.
The story goes that Jim would hold card games, “for entertainment only”, in his house that might last a couple days so it was inevitable that he might have to provide some food for the players. At first they were cold sandwiches, “hoagies”, made with Italian cold cuts and great bread from one of the small Italian bakeries that abounded in Philly. It wasn’t long before some were asking for steak sandwiches. Voila!
Jim had no training as an engineer or or a chef, but he knew about balance in food. Sometimes in the late Fifties, he began to experiment with making his steak sandwich predictable and always delicious. He knew that the amount of beef and the size of the roll were related. The roll that he was getting, Amorosos, needed almost 8 ounces of meat to be balanced. It would be too expensive to sell that sandwich and make a profit. So he asked his friend Lenny Amoroso who ran a small Italian bakery a few blocks north if he could make a smaller roll to accommodate 6 ounces of beef, the perfect”balance’. Amorosos complied and that roll ,called the Jims Special, as far as I know is still available today. The current trend, that the more meat the better, is for the kids and the uninformed.
It wasn’t long before the “steak” became the “Cheesesteak”, offering first just slices of provolone melted on the steak, then offering American cheese as well.
It was Jim, ever the innovator, who introduced Cheez Whiz as a third cheese choice. He liked the taste of Whiz but also liked the convenience of being able butter rolls with it beforehand rather than melting cheese to order. Today, it is a rare steak joint that doesn’t offer a choice of provolone, American or Cheez Whiz on your steak. I love seeing great chefs of high cuisine make their version of the cheesesteak. Wagyu beef or Charolais or Black Angus in clarified butter with Walla Walla onions and put it on a brioche roll from a great Parisian boulangerie. I have to laugh at how gloriously they all miss the point. The cheesesteak is one of the best iterations of a trencherman’s lunch as ever there was and it is for blue color guys. Though rib eye is the choice today, originally, and still is among purists, top round and specifically 2 portions of the round, the knuckle, an interior piece, shaped like a football. The other is the flat, which looks like a brisket and needs no trimming, just temper and slice.You need to remove some silverskin, from the knuckle, chilling to 34 degrees and slice it on the slicer. You are rewarded with ruby red 4x5 inch slices that go from slicer to grill.
The lubricant is soy oil, but in the beginning t was lard. Some Philistines selling cheap steaks use water. There’s a special place in hell for those guys. Piled on the grill also are chopped onions, Spanish. The pile is about about 0 inches wide, but only the side nearest the grill man has heat under it and as the cooked onions are used, more from the uncooked side are moved over. If a customer has asked for American or Provolone cheese, the grill man lays 3 or 4 slices over a pile of cooked beef, lays an open roll over the beef, presses down and scoops all onto the roll. If the have ordered Cheez Whiz, he’ll pick up a pre- slathered roll from a small table and scoop the beef onion treasure onto the roll, hand it to his right to a counter person who will wrap it and hand it to the cashier. That’s the whole story of a great Philly steak.
Now I love steaks, but my go-to is always the hoagie with great Italian meats sliced thin with slices of Jersey tomato, olive oil and Spanish onion. The great debate there, and it rages on and on; is hinged roll or no hinge? I know and I ain’t tellin’.
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