A few weeks ago, Bill called me and asked a simple question: “Do you want to go to Philadelphia to get cheesesteaks?”
Do I need to mention that I answered yes without any sort of hesitation whatsoever?
Fast forward to May 16 — there we were with Chelsea (who now lives in the Philly burbs), sitting on a retaining wall at the intersection of Passyunk and Ninth, getting heckled by a 10-year-old because of our sandwich choice.
As the name suggests, Philly cheesesteaks are from Philly and two restaurants, Geno’s Steaks and Pat’s King of Steaks, claim to be the originator. Luckily, this isn’t a cross-town rivalry. It’s more like cross-street.
Pat’s and Geno’s are at the diagonal intersection of Passyunk Avenue and Ninth Street in South Philadelphia. Pat’s, in a plain white building, has been in its location nearly 80 years and has an historic marker in the front. Geno’s is steeped in history as well but — with its bright colors, neon lights and enormous half-eaten cheesesteak at the top of the building — is a relative newcomer.
Pat’s, founded by Pat and Harry Olivieri in 1930, is said to have made the first steak sandwich (as both Pat’s and Geno’s calls them) in 1933. Roughly 33 years later, Joe Vento came on the scene with Geno’s and one of them put cheese on the steak sandwich first. No one knows which one did it first and thus a rivalry on an Amoroso roll was born. And boy is it tough.
Bill and I started off by going to Mojo’s Friday night at getting a cheesesteak. Including the cheesesteak, I had a $24 tab at Mojo’s. Did I mention it was Happy Hour? This is a few weeks after I chastised myself for overspending. I don’t know when I started becoming a typical American. It must have been when I bought two new Sentras and then a new Altima.
Anyway, after drinking until far too late in the night and eventually hanging out with Ashley, her freind Kenny, Pat Kane and Bill’s friend from high school Brandon, Bill and I got up at 6 a.m. Saturday and headed for Norristown because that’s where Chelsea lives. From there, we took the high-speed train to the subway station at 69th Street and headed for the Broad Street Subway station at Federal Street to walk a few blocks to the mecca of greasy meat. It just so happened to be the Ninth Street Italian Market Festival so we were greeted not only by Geno’s shining like a grilled bovine beacon but also a horrible cover band and an incredible crowd of people in the streets.
We started out with Pat’s and got it served “Whiz Wit.” Provolone has been called the first cheese on a steak sandwich but Cheese Whiz became the topping of choice. The “Wit” means with onions and a Whiz Wit is going native.
As we ate our Pat’s, the kid I mentioned before walked by and started chanting “Geno’s!” at us. Honestly, I think that was the first time I’ve been heckled by a 10-year-old since I was … well … 10. Despite the tough crowd, we dug in and began to judge the sandwich on the quality of the roll, the meat, the amount of cheese, the overall atmosphere and quality of service.
While we let our first steak sandwich of the day digest, there was one more thing we had to do. About a mile northwest of City Hall is the Philadelphia Museum of Art. If you know your films, you’ll inexplicably get a slurred accent and yell, “Yo, Adrian!” once you see it.
When we got out of the subway station at City Hall, the first thing that greeted us was a homeless guy lying on a bench with his shirt open and his right hand making rhythmic motions in the crotch region of his jeans.
“Did you see that homeless dude masturbating?” Bill said as we were out of an earshot.
“Yes,” I said. “I chose to ignore it.”
Chelsea somehow managed to miss a dude playing with his junk right in front of us.
When we got to the correct side of City Hall, we spotted Love Park and the first of at least five weddings between City Hall and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. As we headed out toward the famous Rocky Stairs, Bill and I discovered that the museum was a lot farther than we though. That was not cool considering that we walked the full length of the festival and discovered that William Penn’s blocks are uncommonly large for city blocks.
“I hate you,” Bill said at the foot of the stairs after we rested twice to get there and I half convinced him to keep going all the way to the stairs.
“It was your idea,” I said.
“You were the one who said we could walk here,” Bill said.
“You have a point,” I said.
And we were off. Bill got to the top of the stairs before I did and I walked up the last few because I decided to hit every step on the way up and they were too shallow for be conducive to running that way. When we reached the top, we saw what was probably the best view of the city possible and, of course, raised our arms in triumph. The true triumph, though, would be the consumption of the third cheesesteak for Bill and I within 24 hours.
Dusk was settling in as we arrived back at Passyunk and Ninth. Geno’s had already switched on the lights and glowed at the diagonal intersection like Philadelphia’s own Times Square. As we waited in the slow-moving line, we drank in more of the architecture of Geno’s. Along with being a shrine to the sandwich, it was covered in photographs, was obviously a full-on tourist trap and definitely doubled as Vento’s political statement against people who can’t speak English well and Mumia Abu-Jamal.
Geno’s had the better steak; it was chopped thick and put on the bun in whole slices. My bun was better this time around but there was a burning question about the steak sandwich for a few seconds: Where’s the Whiz? Geno’s puts the cheese on the roll first and either they went easy on the cheese or the properties of the Cheese Whiz and/or the roll caused it to get absorbed into the bread. On top of that, it seemed more like the onions weren’t grilled but were just warm from their proximity to the grill itself.
Pat’s sandwich, from earlier, had chopped meat not unlike what happens when you try to cook Steak-umms at home just by trying to flip them over. The onions were sautéed, my roll was a bit too chewy and the Whiz was piled on thick. Although the line wrapped around the building during this festival time, we were served quickly and, overall, Pat’s had the air of your everyday neighborhood restaurant that suddenly had a crush of people.
Before we even finished our Geno’s sandwich, we had our verdict: Pat’s was chosen as indeed being the King of Steaks in the Passyunk and Ninth Philly Cheesesteak Challenge and Bill and I headed back to Virginia not long after. Our goal was to get out of Philadelphia city limits before nightfall and we did just that.
On the way home, it started raining buckets and everyone on Interstate 95 discovered that Maryland did a poor job of putting down reflective markers on the interstate to compensate for conditions like that one. It led to a mix of people who were slowing down, people still driving like bats out of hell and people like me who concluded that the safest bet was to continue going the speed limit and keep a look out for the too slow and the too fast. While trying to discern if everyone is actually in a traffic lane.
In Baltimore, I decided I was tired of paying tolls and got off at Eastern Avenue with the intention of hopping back on 95 at the Inner Harbor. I knew something utterly ridiculous had to happen during this trip and that was it.
It was still pouring. The city had repaved Eastern Avenue and hadn’t put the lines back in the roads. Eastern Avenue sometimes has on-street parking. At one point, we were four cars abreast and going straight on a road that maybe, MAYBE had two lanes going straight. People were cutting in front of each other, others nearly slammed into parked cars, horns were honked and someone may have gotten followed by someone with road rage. I pulled off at Broadway and almost got hit by a car going in reverse for apparently no reason. On Fayette Street, a van decided that it didn’t care about the lane closed ahead sign and nearly killed us all. Finally, we got onto 395.
“Why did we go through Baltimore at night again?” Bill asked.
“Because it would be ridiculous,” I said.
I was awake for about 22 hours once I got settled back at home. I did take a little nap at about 2 a.m. because I was starting to see things as I headed down the road and switched off with Bill. It was definitely about 4 a.m. when I got settled in my bed, technically 22 hours after I woke up that day. Was it worth going all that way to eat what is now an American staple found anywhere, especially since many people don’t consider either to be the best cheesesteak in town? There’s only one way to find out.
Next month, we head to Lexington, N.C., to see a city that has one barbecue restaurant for every thousand people.
We are so epic.
OF COURSE we took pictures!
