Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Hometown Dish
200
Philly Cheese Steak
Wit' Whiz or Witout
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
In Philadelphia, of course, they never call it
“Philly” cheese steak—it's just a cheese
steak, and it's the most iconic local spe-
cialty of a city that
really loves
its local
specialties. You can order it without
cheese, but that's a steak sandwich; you
can order it with mozzarella and tomato
sauce, which is a pizza cheese steak. But
those are sacrilegious variations to cheese
steak purists, who allow only two options—
“wit” (with fried onions) or “witout” (hold
the onions, please).
Most historians credit brothers Pat and
Harry Olivieri for making the first steak
sandwiches, one slow afternoon in 1933 at
their hot dog stand near the Italian Market.
They thin-sliced a bit of cheap steak, fried
it up with some onions, and shoveled the
whole mess onto a hot dog roll. Custom-
ers loved the new sandwich so much, the
Olivieris soon renamed their stand
Pat's
King of Steaks.
Still run by members of
the Olivieri family, Pat's remains at the
original South Philly location, in a ram-
shackle turreted corner building at 9th
Street and Passyunk Avenue, easily identi-
fied by the lines running down the side-
walk—especially late at night, since Pat's
is open 24 hours a day. Service is strictly
walk-up, seating is limited, and they take
cash only. After all these years, it's still
quite a scene.
While competition sprang up all over
town throughout the 1940s and 1950s,
Pat's biggest rival is right across the inter-
section:
Geno's Steaks,
which opened
with a gaudy blaze of neon in 1966. (Talk
about taking on your rival
mano a mano
.)
Geno's is also open 24/7, also cash-only,
and also has long lines, though they move
fast—read the signs on the photo-cluttered
walls to nail down the complicated protocol
One wit' everything at Pat's—home of the original South Philly steak sandwich.
