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This Monday Meg and I were New Haven-bound. We laid out a rigorous itinerary of two pizza joints, burgers and ice cream; plotted and printed maps, checked train schedules, and roped in a third heifer, my good buddy Sledge who lives in New Haven. Just to be sure that an 11am arrival wouldn’t be too early, I checked the schedules of the establishments on our itinerary, and…aside from one, they were all closed on Mondays. So it was that we ended up heading toward the safety of Philadelphia, home of multiple 24/7 cheese steak places.

First and second on our itinerary were Geno’s and Pat’s, respectively – probably the two most famous cheese steak joints in the land of cheese steaks. Housed in wedge-shaped structures, pointing at one another across an X-shaped intersection in South Philly, each one has its devotees. We briefly discussed buying a sandwich from each and eating them side-by-side, but we saw no comfortable place nearby to do so, and we didn’t want to open ourselves up to unknown abuses for bringing a sandwich from one place to eat at the other. So, we decided to eat one of each in rapid succession.

Geno's

Pat's

Because we came to it first, we started at Geno’s. Though every place in Philly that offers cheese steaks – and there are a LOT of them – seems to offer a choice of provolone or Cheez Whiz, in our minds, salty, tangy, heavily processed Whiz is the way to go. So we ordered one sandwich, “Whiz wit” – that’s “with Cheez Whiz and sauteed onions” in the local parlance – a classic Philly cheese steak order. Then we stepped down to the next window to pick up a birch beer (at both Pat’s and Geno’s you order and receive your sandwich through one window and order and receive sides and drinks from a separate window).

Meg had been intrigued by the little round peppers she noticed somebody eating while we waited in line to order. When she went to get us napkins, she spotted them in bins at the condiment counter and grabbed us each one red and one green.

According to the men who shared a table with us, these spicy, tangy little orbs, which make a pleasant, juicy pop at first bite, are known as “cherry peppers.” Whatever they are called, we were all too pleased to have them when it turned out that our sandwich was so bland. The Whiz was watered down and runny, the meat, gray and unseasoned, and the onions, sparse. The roll was nice, with a satisfyingly chewy exterior, but it wasn’t enough to elevate the sandwich beyond just acceptable.

I really like cheese steaks, but they’re simple fare, never greater than the sum of their parts – steak, cheese (or cheese product), bread, perhaps some onions and maybe peppers and/or mushrooms if you really want to gild the lily, though some would argue such additions are sacrilege – so it’s important that all the components be just right in order to end up with a sandwich that’s just right. Geno’s missed the mark, and off we headed to Pat’s.

A sign beside the sandwich-order window, which delineates the rules for ordering, is brusque, as are the men behind the counter, a quality which unites the two competitors. But whereas Geno’s – heavily branded, smattered with “patriotic” signs (e.g. “I’m mad as hell, and I want my country back!”) and slicked with garish yellow and orange – comes across with swagger, Pat’s – housed in a no-frills, slightly nautical white building, surrounded by red wire-mesh picnic tables – seems simply prosaic.

As it turns out, Pat’s directs the energy that it doesn’t pour into gaudiness and arrogance at making a superior sandwich, boasting of tastier meat, a more liberal application of more flavorful onions, and a thick, creamy slap of undiluted Whiz – straight from the can (stacks of which are proudly displayed in Pat’s front window).

The roll was similar to Geno’s, with a pleasant, chewy crust and crumb. I overheard the Philadelphian sitting beside us claim to her tourist companion that the secret to a real Philly cheese steak is the roll, that the secret to the roll is Philly water, and that as a result, a real Philly cheese steak cannot be found anywhere but Philly. It reminded me of similar arguments that I’ve heard in New York about pizza and bagels. I’ve yet to test the validity of these claims, but I always enjoy hearing them and the blind pride that they convey.

In addition to red and green cherry peppers, Pat’s condiment bar offered the aptly, though unimaginatively, named “black peppers”. They looked like brown-black versions of the small, dried red peppers that you might find in Chinese take-out. In flavor they were only mildly spicy and imparted a lovely smokiness when crammed into the sandwich. They were a nice extra touch that helped make Pat’s our hands-down favorite of the dueling icons.

It was not, however, our favorite of the day. That honor must be bestowed upon Jim’s, perhaps the third most well-known cheese steak joint in Philly. Well before we took the first bite of our sandwich, we were thoroughly enjoying this place. Decked out with a black-and-white hexi floor, black-and-white Art Deco light fixtures, shiny chrome accents and signs lettered with a graphic Deco font, it’s a lovely place to wait in line for a while (something that one has to accept when visiting any of the iconic Philly cheese steak joints at lunch time).

 

 

Then there’s the show. Behind a grease-spattered plexiglass shield, with the side of a wide spatula, a cook deftly hacks chunks from a massive heap of ruddy, thin-sliced beef. With the same spatula, he slides the chunks toward the center of the well-seasoned griddle, spreading and chopping them along the way, and occasionally dousing them with water, giving rise to dramatic billows of steam. At the other end of the griddle, lies a glistening pile of onions, from which he slides off a lightly browned portion for each sandwich that requires it. With each order, he grabs and splits a roll, applies the appropriate cheese, slides a portion of beef over toward the onions and a portion of onions toward the beef; then he turns the cheesed roll over on top of the portioned beef and onions, presses down, slides his spatula underneath, and flips the whole thing tidily over onto a waiting paper tray. Then it’s onto a tray, on to the condiment/beverage station, and ultimately hoisted to the upper counter, waiting before quivering eyes and nostrils as monetary transactions are made.

After sucking down two cups of insipid fountain birch beer at Geno’s and Pat’s, we were relieved by Jim’s lack of a fountain and happy to order a can of reliably tasty Dr. Brown’s black cherry soda.

Heading for the upstairs seating area with soda and sandwich, we stopped for a moment to marvel at the automatic slicer, which gives rise to the beautiful heaps of beef that become the hashed filling for Jim’s sandwiches.

Though we were slightly disappointed by the lack of cherry or black peppers at the condiment counter, we didn’t really miss them. The roll was chewy on the outside but soft on the inside, compressing into a thin, juice-soaked wrap for the fillings. The steak in our sandwich was nicely browned and seasoned, the onions were perfectly cooked, flavorful, and like the thick, tangy Whiz, amply applied. There was nothing ground-breaking about the sandwich – and with a classic Philly cheese steak, there shouldn’t be – it was just plain good, the perfect, deliciously satisfying sum of all its parts.

As we headed to our final planned destination, the heat and humidity of the day (and perhaps the three cheese steaks we’d consumed) began to take their toll, so we decided to cool off with another Philly favorite, water ice. At Rita’s, a popular source for the stuff, we ordered a small, red cherry flavor. With a texture more coarse and crystalline than Italian ice and more dense, less liquid than a slushy, our water ice was indeed refreshing, but its flavor was one-dimensionally sweet and artificial. We ditched it after a few spoonfuls apiece, and with day-glo red lips, we marched on.

At the Franklin Fountain, a carefully wrought Victorian-era soda fountain, Meg and I were a touch overwhelmed by choice. Should we follow our natural inclinations and get ice cream, or should we get an egg cream or a float or a phosphate – all prepared with hand-made sodas (flavored syrup and soda water, drawn from the Fountain’s beautiful vintage soda fountain)? Then there were all the appealing flavors and accoutrements to choose from, about 20 or so of each.

It took us a while to sort it all out, taking occasional breaks from our pondering to look around and admire our surroundings and point out newly spotted details, of which there were many. Eventually, we took the road most travelled (at least by us) and ordered sundaes: a scoop of banana ice cream with hot caramel sauce for me, and a scoop of vanilla with sweet and salty peanut-butter sauce and hot fudge for Meg. Though the ice cream-to-sauce ratio was a bit high for our tastes, the ice cream itself was rich and creamy and tasted of natural flavorings, and the sauces were tasty (the hot caramel sauce was more akin to butterscotch syrup, but enjoyable nonetheless).

The house-made rootbeer, which Meg decided to order for the road, had a complex, homemade flavor, with hints of cinnamon, molasses, wintergreen and more.

Our last stop of the day was just a few doors away from the Franklin Fountain: Shane Candies, established 1911, which claims to be the country’s oldest candy store. I had been before and had no desire for anything more to eat, but I really wanted Meg to see the amazing original interior – all-white with parallel walls of built-in, curlicue-framed shelves and glass cases with wainscoting bases running the full length of the store. The candy selection is extensive and enticingly displayed in the style of plenty. Both suckers for color and bounty, we each headed back to the train with a sack of candy in tow.

xoxo Amanda

Geno’s Steaks
1219 9th St.
Philadelphia, PA 19147
www.genosteaks.com

Pat’s King of Steaks
1237 E Passyunk Ave
Philadelphia, PA 19147
www.patskingofsteaks.com

Jim’s Steaks
400 South Street
Philadelphia, PA 19147
www.jimssteaks.com

Rita’s
239 South Street
Philadelphia, PA 19147
www.ritasice.com

The Franklin Fountain
116 Market Street
Philadelphia, PA 19106
www.franklinfountain.com

Shane Candies
110 Market St
Philadelphia, PA 19106
(215) 922-1048

Tags: Cheese Steak, Ice Cream, Philadelphia, Sandwiches, Soda

This entry was posted on Saturday, June 27th, 2009 at 6:39 PM and is filed under Road Trip. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.