The Original Philly Cheesesteak

Every native Philadelphian has their favorite place to get Philly Cheesesteaks, but there is only one original: Pat’s King of Steaks.  The story of the cheesesteak dates back to the 1930s when brothers Pat and Harry Olivieri started a hotdog stand in an Italian neighborhood in South Philly.  One day, the guys working behind the counter were sick of eating hotdogs for lunch, so they ran to the butcher and bought some steak.  They fried it up, threw it on some bread, and began to dig in.  A regular customer, a taxi driver, came up to the window to order a hotdog but saw the steak sandwich and requested one of those instead.  They gave him a small one and as he walked away he advised them to stop selling hotdogs and sell steak sandwiches.  The cheesesteak was born, but at the time, they weren’t adding cheese!  The Philly Cheesesteak that we know and love today didn’t come around until the 1960s.  They decided to use Cheez Whiz for their sandwiches because it was the easiest and fastest to “slap on” when they had a lot of people to serve.  It’s now their most ordered sandwich. 

So how is it made?  Easy!  They use rib eye steak and slice it really thin.  Then they fry it with onions on a grill.  They put the steak and onions on a nice loaf of fresh Italian bread, and then top it with warm Cheez Whiz.  Although it’s easy to make, ordering can be tricky.  At Pat’s they use their own cheesesteak lingo: “wit” and “wit-out”.  “Wit” means with onions, and “wit-out” means without onions.  So, if you’d like a cheesesteak with onions and Cheez Whiz, you would ask for, “Whiz wit”.  If you’d like provolone instead, you’d say, “Provolone wit”, and so on.

If you’ve heard of Pat’s King of Steaks, chances are you’ve also heard about their famous rivalry with neighboring cheesesteak joint, Geno’s Steaks.  They sit across the street from one another, both serving what they claim to be the best Philly Cheesesteaks.  What does GM Tommy Francano say about it?  “Competition, rivalry, it’s good for business actually.  It makes us do a better job because we have to produce a better cheesesteak than anybody else so it makes us work harder.”

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