Cheesesteak Madness

cheesesteak with american from john's roast pork

big daddy from carmen's in bellmawr

dont be scared- donkey's is awesome and probably safer than where you live

Check out our Cheesesteak roundup over on Serious Eats. Definitely got some new favorites - Carmen's, Donkey's, Chinks... Philip's is still way up there. Something about the way these places do it... the instant you taste it you know you're eating one of the top 10 in the city, and it's sort of sad to ever go back to eating some pile of frozen "chopped and formed" steak that tastes like cardboard.

Serious Eats: Philadelphia Sandwich Tour: 10 Cheesesteaks We Love

donkey's steak on round del buono poppy seed rolls, beer is a dollar

quit worrying about the name and go eat one the best in the city

giant mint shake barely thinned down from ice cream, good luck

apparently chink's didnt serve whiz until 1 year ago.. delicious

philip's pepper steak... awesome

Of course the article got a lot of "why the hell didn't you go to Jim's or Tony Luke's" (yawn) plus a couple that I keep hearing about over and over that look damn good- Mama's Pizzeria in Bala Cynwyd (read about them on Roadfood) and Chick's Deli in Cherry Hill (read about them on Beef and Buns, awesome blog)

The future is definitely not "fancy" cheesesteaks on baguette with gruyere truffle wiz but instead ethnic cheesesteaks like the korean bulgogi "Koagies" and Mexican pizzeria cheesesteaks.... There's others out there too - some real some imagined - so if you know about some hole in the wall in the back of a Cambodian fish market that makes shrimp paste cheesesteaks feel free to let me know!

$5.00 Fish Hoagie

Somewhere in West Philly...


All the sights along the Cheesesteak Highway.. we're working on a Cheesesteak round-up similar to last week's Hoagie slideshow looking for fresh Cheesesteak magic all over the city....


Almost stopped at this one but we had already eaten 3 or 4 different cheesesteaks that day. Love the hand lettering and wish I had the time to stop at every place like this in the city.

Q-Mart, Hot Dogs, and Spor's Luncheonette

Q-mart is an amazing flea/farmers market in Quakertown (hour outside the city) where I bought my first Venom LP and where you can still find Highlander daggers and ninja swords alongside old motors and tables full of bootleg natural health products sold out of cardboard boxes.


What I never really thought about was that Qmart is an absolute goldmine of amazing food. Pennsylvania Dutch-ish amazing butcher shops that kick the ass of anything in Reading Terminal or the Italian Market along with at least 3 stalls dedicated to nothing but fried foods like these home-made potato chips.



This pickle shop was a highlight, also these days Q-mart has a huge Latin american population which means tons of taco stands and a Puerto Rican restaurant that looked like the real deal.


Sure there is some sketchy stuff, like these hot dogs that I was SUPER excited about, located in the "indoor/outdoor" mart, a maze of makeshift buildings with semipermanent stalls filled with RC cars, more weapons, and piles of trash. One dog was topped with horseradish, cheese, mustard and onions, the other with pepperoni and cheese - a horrible trainwreck of lukewarm dogs cooked on a 7-11 style roller grill, stale buns, cold canned pizza sauce and not fresh giant chunks of onion. What a bummer.



Keep in mind this is not your fancy eco-yuppie farmers market.. not every place is going to be delicious, and there's a lot of people just selling canned beef stew, expired shampoo and cel phone covers that look like they fell off the back of a truck. But for every few of those there's an amazing food stand with people lined up by the dozens. We even found a better hot dog later on that I'm saving for Hot Dog Of The Week.


On the same trip my parents brought us to Spor's general store which has a restaurant in the back where they stop after every trip to Q-mart. If you were wondering where I get my obsession with strange, out of the way lunch shops in depressing small towns where I'm convinced some holy grail regional food item exists (but everyone else just sees a dumpy diner) now you know.

My parents spend practically every weekend combing Pennsylvania small towns looking for stuff like this and photographing everything. They probably have enough material to fill about 25 books but to them it's just for fun.


Spor's is close enough to Philly to have cheesesteaks on the menu but also pierogies and these amazing potato wedges coated in seasoned flour almost like fried chicken. There's actually a stall in Q-mart that makes the same thing that they call "Jo-Jo's" sold by the pound in grease soaked brown paper bags.. so maybe this is a regional thing but either way they are awesome. I'll definitely be back to Q-mart soon to try out some more stuff so keep your eyes peeled.

Quakertown Farmer's Market
201 Station Road Quakertown, PA 18951

Spor's Luncheonette
Trumbauersville, PA

Hoagie Madness

cumberland from slack's - boloney, ham, capicola, american cheese
For the past few weeks Caroline and myself plus a rotating cast of assistant eaters have been on a super intense hoagie tour working on this post for Serious Eats, not a "best of philly" but more like "a few of our favorites plus some we never tried before and heard were awesome and some unknown neighborhood spots we were saving for something like this".

Serious Eats - 10 Amazing Philadelphia Hoagies You Should Eat
"the avalanche" from juliano's deli
I'm sure the comments section will rage with angry Philadelphians "any list that doesn't include Big Joey's Hoagie Hut on Street road is total BS!" And honestly even though we ate a LOT of hoagies - more than twice what's on this list, a lot didn't make the cut - It still feels incomplete, especially because when get started with something like this people start telling you about all sorts of places, so there's at least 25 more legendary delis and hidden gems that should be on here.

And if you're wondering "where the hell is Johns Roast Pork you idiot" keep in mind there's two more of these coming, Cheesesteaks and Miscellaneous sandwiches which will probably be 99% roast pork and maybe a chicken cutlet. We're leaving banh mi, po-boys, and anything fancy for future articles.

italian from mike & matts - 12th & mifflin
It's probably too much detail for Serious Eats (or anywhere for that matter) but I feel like you could break Philadelphia Hoagies down into several sub-categories and have 5-10 great examples of each.

• Old Italian seeded - roll style
Cosmi's, Chickie's, P&S

• American Salad-Oil style
Slack's, Lee's, etc

• Italian / Jewish Deli Fusion
Koch's and every jewish deli that also makes hoagies

• Asian deli/grocery flower shop style
Delicious Bites, Jay's Deli, countless center city corner shops

• Norristown Zeps
Micro-regional variation, very different than a Hoagie

• In the cut
Fish hoagies, Gooey Louie's, Hoagie City..

rose's special sicilian from carmen's in bell mawr NJ
I definitely came out with a new favorite.. Carmen's, in JERSEY of all places, was the one that really blew my mind, combining the best of both worlds, meaning the legit italian meats that you would find in South Philly, but on a softer Del Buono roll similar to White House in Atlantic City.

koch's jewish tongue hoagie
The best EXPERIENCE had to be Koch's deli, that I can't believe more people don't talk about, we waited about 45 minutes for two hoagies, with the dude telling filthy jokes about "I give you my tongue" and giving us free samples the whole time, he literally plopped a mound of potato salad right into my hand (can I get a napkin?), along with tongue, brisket, corned beef, the whole time he's going on about how you can't get anything else like it Philly, his sandwiches are better than Katz's in New York, so on and so forth.

There was a group of people who I'm pretty sure were just there for the show, along with one really pissed off girl who kept saying "I'm just here for a sandwich" and muttered something about not eating red meat (why would you go there?!?!?!) And also, the sandwich was amazing.

Tammy & Johnny's Fried Chicken

After eating some rough fried chicken at Bojangles somewhere along Virginia's Eastern Shore, about 5 miles down the road we saw this place packed to the gills with people lined up for chicken & burgers and made sure to stop in on the way home. It's definitely an eclectic, no-frills spot, with some framed articles along the walls (I think it's been there since the 50's or 60's) but also sort of a strange odor in the dining room and a lot of neck tattoos.


The menu can be a challenge to decipher, I think we ordered the "hunter's combo" which means a burger with cheese and a drink? Chicken is ordered as a "boat" or "dinner" and there's also "Bbq" which I'm assuming means a sandwich (didn't try it). The burger was nothing special, your average gray fast food style burger. Cole slaw was sort of watery and sad and I was worried we had another loser on our hands.


But then- holy s&*%, the fried chicken .... this is what everyone was lined up for. Ultra crispy, well seasoned medium-thick breading and probably some of the juiciest (as in not dried out, not even the breast, like every other fried chicken) perfectly cooked fried chicken I've ever had. Don't mess around with burgers or sides or anything else, just get a bucket of chicken and maybe some sweet tea. Fries are pretty good too.



Tammy & Johnny's
27352 Lankford Hwy (route 13)
Melfa, VA 23410

Bojangles Failure

Last time I was down south it was for hot dogs, literally stopping at 6 or 7 places a day with no time (or appetite) to stop at every awesome BBQ place and all the beautiful looking southern fast food chains that still look like 1970 like Bojangles. If you ever find yourself in the position of traveling the country eating only one food item for weeks at a time you'll see that everything, ANYTHING else looks like the best thing in the world.


Last weekend we were heading South (well, Delaware to Virgina Beach at least) and stopped at the first Bojangles we saw. I was pretty psyched as fried chicken is up there with my favorite stuff and Philly is really almost totally devoid of the real thing. I got even more excited when I saw the signs for the "$1.29 Fried Bologna Biscuit".


To make a long story short, like most places I talk up to my girlfriend for 8 hours to convince her to go there, it sucked. The Bologna meat tasted kind of sketchy, chicken not that crispy, sides had no flavor. We would have been better off at the Popeyes on Broad & Snyder. Even the BISCUITS are better at Popeye's. The only thing slightly "southern" about the experience was when I asked for hot sauce the guy gave me 12 PACKETS and asked if I wanted more.

Most of you are probably thinking "of course it sucked, it's fast food" but there's something about regional mini-chains that fascinates me, like the Greek-themed pastrami burger joints in Utah I've been reading up on for a freelance project. And I haven't ruled Bojangles out, maybe the good ones are further south??

New Stuff at Hot Diggity

Just stopped by Hot Diggity to check out some new dogs including Keith's awesome version of the Philly Combo that Holly Moore called the "best he's ever had" and yeah it's amazing.


A Sabrett's natural casing dog is wrapped in a homemade salt cod / potato mixture, breaded with panko and deep fried. Topped with pepper hash and brown mustard. Not fishy at all and much better than the questionable frozen fish cake you would be eating if you ordered this from some scary lunch stand under Market East station.


Hot Diggity is really coming through with making stuff from scratch and taking hot dog technique to the next level. Especially with their latest "Buffalo Dog" which will be on the menu (or as a special?) real soon.


Diggity's Buffalo dogs are made from actual Buffalo meat at D'Angelos on 9th street (Philly's #1 source of exotic meat) and are actual hot dogs - fine ground meat in hot dog size rather than coarse ground sausage being called "hot dog" for a gimmick. Topped with honey buffalo wing sauce, diced celery, chunks of good blue cheese and topped with deep fried crispy chicken skin.

I've seen a lot of "Buffalo" style hot dogs and honestly they usually turn me off (dog dipped in hot sauce and drowned in blue cheese dressing = no thanks) but this one is GREAT. Other news from Hot Diggity is that they are now BYOB and will soon be carrying Levis Champ Cherry Soda which you should definitely order with your Philly Combo.

Hot Diggity
630 South Street
Philadelphia

Western PA Pepperoni Rolls, Mint Ginger Ale and Fallingwater

After trying Pepperoni Rolls most people's reaction is something like "We really drove 6 hours for this? its a dinner roll with some pepperoni in it... I know this place in Manayunk that makes REAL pepperoni bla bla bla...."

But we're not talking about that. We're talking about the greasy gas station snack that started with Italian coal miners back in the day, and is pretty much only found in West Virginia and Southwestern PA and parts of Maryland, that for some reason I find myself fascinated with, and for which I dragged my friends (who would rather be fishing and/or drinking beer) along to every gas station and grocery store in a 5 mile radius of our campsite.

Most Pepperoni Rolls are pre-packaged, so It was awesome to find this gas station / bakery / grocery that makes their own. They were pretty good, sort of sweet and filled with slices of Pepperoni (some have sticks and/or cheese) soaked in orange grease (this is a good thing) and 50 cents each.


The next place I asked if they had any pepperoni rolls and they lady behind the deli counter said "my sister makes them when she's here but she only works on saturdays" so I guess home-made pepperoni rolls are pretty common in southwestern PA. Awesome.


Some other good stuff from this area was Tom Tucker Mint Ginger Ale (add whiskey for an almost mint julep) and Stoney's, a super delicious cheap local lager made in the old Rolling Rock brewery in Latrobe... 20 times better than Iron City or Old German.


Other stops included Fallingwater (AMAZING) and LOTS of hot dogs including this "Hot Chee Dog" from Hamilton Restaurant that you can read about on Serious Eats.



read more
Hot Dog Of The Week - Hot Chee Dog
Drawingforfood - West VA Pepperoni Rolls
Bobheffner.com - Pepperoni Roll Variations
Fallingwater Cookbook Excerpt

Philadelphia Jewish Deli Dogs and Casino Deli

If you've been following my hot dog articles for the past couple years, you might be familiar with my fascination with Jewish Deli hot dogs, specifically the so-called, maybe-doesn't really exist "Kosher Tommy" - an all beef hot dog wrapped in beef salami (or beef bologna, at one place in Philly and a few in Baltimore -and sometimes cheese, yes I know it's not kosher ) that was/is supposedly a kosher/sort of kosher alternative to the "Texas Tommy" (bacon wrapped cheese filled dog).


The fascination goes back to the bizarre story of my Jewish / not Jewish family, especially my grandfather who was raised in Jewish family but abandoned religion in favor of art, yet whose eating habits were still very Northeast Philly Jewish style - whitefish salad, bagels, salami and eggs, and of course these mysterious hot dogs wrapped in salami.

I actually served my version of the "Kosher Tommy" at the Wienermobile event a couple weeks ago (baloney wrapped, and covered with cheese whiz for that philly twist) and most people loved it, although there was a guy who took offense and accused me of "making fun" of people who keep kosher, which was never my intent, and part of the reason for this article was to document the existence of this thing. My only guess to the popularity of cheese on a "kosher" style hot dog is that many Delis in the Philadelphia area also cater to a large non-Jewish or non-Kosher clientele.

Anyway I finally made the trek around the city and the burbs in search of this "Kosher Tommy" thing, and they were all really different, although EVERY jewish deli in the Philadelphia area seems to have some incarnation of a kosher hot dog topped with salami or pastrami or baloney and maybe cheese. My favorite was actually from Zeke's (pictured above), a small deli/diner in the city that I'd never noticed before - called the "Sizzle", a split & grilled dog wrapped in baloney and a pickle that I also jammed into the bun.

Check out my post on Serious Eats for all the dogs-
Hot Dog of the Week: A Tour of Philadelphia Deli Dogs


Another great find on this trip was the Casino Deli in Northeast Philadelphia. This place is like something from another world, a cross between a Jewish Deli and a takeout beer / lottery /grocery / cheesesteak joint.




The entire interior is covered in a massive Atlantic City mural complete with scenes of people rolling dice and various showbiz celebrities. The eccentric staff was awesome and the deli sandwiches terrific.


Pastrami dog was OK, too much bread with the giant roll but the pastrami was good. Great pickles and cheap cold beer. I'd love to come back here on a non-hot dog adventure.

Zeke's 5th Street Deli Bakery
zekes5thstreetdeli.com
318-20 South 5th Street; Philadelphia, PA 19106

Casino Deli
2425 Welsh Road; Philadelphia, PA 19114-2219

1000 free Wienermobile Hot Dogs

YES it is true I will be passing out 1,000 FREE HOT DOGS from the Wienermobile tomorrow (Wed July 20th) from 11:30 'til 1:30 in front of city hall! 5 different hot dogs based on my last two years of intense hot dog research. There's a philly-style pepper hash dog, a "Kosher Tommy" wrapped in salami and cheese wiz, and a crazy Colombian Hot Dog buried under pineapple salsa, bacon, chimichurri mayo and crushed chips. The dogs are Oscar Mayer's new "Selects" - all beef dogs with no nitrates.

Also helping me pass out hot dogs I have a great team including DFF correspondent Caroline as well as the awesome dynamic duo Thom Lessner and Rose Luardo. Come out and get some free dogs!!

15th & Market
Wed July 20th
11:30am - 1:30pm

more info on Meal Ticket-
Philly's Hawk Krall mans the Wienermobile next week

Ride Those Bikes

Friends of Drawing For Food Aaron and Jamie-Lee (who have in the past brought me awesome New England food gifts like Atkins Farm Donuts and Moxie) are currently 10 days into an epic 2-month bike ride across the United States and I'm jealous.


OK well maybe not Jealous of biking 100 miles a day through the mountains in 95 degree heat, but definitely of their route off the main highways and through small towns, and stops at awesome diners, apple orchards and roadside stands.


Food highlights so far have been the "fried mush" at the County Seat - an amazing looking Amish diner in Goshen, Indiana, having pizza delivered to their "stealth campsite" in an abandoned state park, and breakfast at the Steel Trolley in Lisbon, Ohio, with an awesome looking menu that includes 10 different varieties of hot dog that they probably didn't get because Aaron's a vegetarian. Bummer but at least they took some hot dog photos for me.


Anyway I'm psyched to see what else they eat and find as they blow through Iowa, Wisconsin, Minnesota and South Dakota. Check out ridethosebikes.blogspot.com for more.