Cheesesteak or Hoagie: Which sandwich rules in Philadelphia?

by Jeffrey White on

I’m writing this from Philadelphia, where I’ve been thinking a lot lately about sandwiches. In the City of Brotherly Love, you can’t help it, really.

Any city with one signature sandwich can count itself pretty lucky. There’s Boston and the lobster roll, New Orleans and the po’ boy, Baltimore and the crab cake sandwich, San Francisco and pretty much anything pressed between two thick slices of sourdough.

But Philadelphia can claim, pretty irrefutably, to have two signature sandwiches: the steak sandwich and the hoagie.

And so, the visitor to Philly is left to wonder whether one holds greater sway. Can one be singled out as the Philadelphia sandwich?

Don’t look for the city to help in this debate. A few years back, City Hall here named the hoagie Philly’s official sandwich. But it has always seemed to me that the steak sandwich — and more specifically, the cheesesteak — has a better claim to that title: It was, after all, invented here, unlike the hoagie, which is just the local name for an Italian sandwich, likely invented by immigrant workers in New York at the turn of the last century.

Over the years, I’ve occasionally asked Philly locals about the two and the opinion breaks pretty much down the middle in terms of which sandwich rules.

Let’s talk about the virtues of both.
The hoagie — or “hero” in New York; “sub,” “grinder,” or “torpedo” elsewhere) is, as I said, essentially an Italian sandwich, meaning various Italian meats, provolone, trimmings and the like on a long roll.

Philly does have its own take on the sandwich, however. Technically, a hoagie features only one Italian meat (salami, for instance), provolone, along with antipasto salad and topped only with olive oil (as opposed to mayo or mustard in other interpretations). In practice, though, you can stack a hoagie with a variety of meats and throw different spices and oils on it. That’s how most places here that claim to make the city’s best hoagie distinguish themselves, by putting little twists on the original. I’m all in favor of these, so long as the hoagie comes out cold — “hot hoagies” are an abomination.

The Philadelphia steak sandwich is simplicity itself. The authentic version only requires two ingredients: thin slices of steak, grilled onions. The steak has to be thin to chop easily on the grill (interpretations of the steak sandwich elsewhere too often substitute steak tips). The onions are key: grilled to the point where they are nearly caramelized, when married to the chopped steak the union drips a sweat grease that soaks into the roll and gives the sandwich its taste. As for cheese, you can choose American or provolone or other fancy offerings, but the real deal blue-collar deal uses Cheez Whiz, which blankets the entire business with yellow-orange goodness.

Do I have a preference? I probably come out on the side of the steak sandwich, given its local roots. But I seldom miss a chance to have a hoagie when in town as well. Here are some places that make the best of both.

For hoagies, I like Carmen’s in the Reading Terminal Market off Market St. (215-592-7799). Primo Hoagies (2043 Chestnut St. / 215-496-8488) and Lee’s Hoagie House (4034 Walnut St. / 215-387-0905) are both chains that routinely win citywide awards for their hoagies; what makes Lee’s so good is the “secret oil” they put on their sandwiches. Sarcone’s Deli (734 S. 9th St. / 215-922-1717) and Slack’s Hoagie Shack (1619 Grant Ave. / 215-673-9888) are also good options.

For steak sandwiches, two places face off (literally) in their claims to make the city’s most authentic: Pat’s Steaks and Geno’s Steaks have held down the same corner on 9th St. at the intersection of Wharton and Passyunk for years, and are both rightfully considered Philly institutions. Pat’s can lay claim to being the birthplace of the steak sandwich, having cooked up the first one in 1930. Both have become tourist traps over the years (with prices, $7-$9 for a sandwich, to reflect that) but are still worth the visit. Jim’s Steaks (400 South St. / 215-928-1911) serves the best along popular South Street. Sonny’s Famous Steaks (228 Market St. / 215-629-5760) is probably the best steak sandwich you can find in Old City. Rick’s Steaks recently had to close its location in the Reading Terminal Market, where it had been a fixture for 25 years. Now it operates a seasonal stand at Citizen’s Bank Park, the home of the Philadelphia Phillies.

Got a particular favorite?

Plan for sin, seven ideas

by Tom Johansmeyer on

You may not remember the “seven deadly sins,” but you’ve probably lived a healthy portion of them. Well, I have, and I’m sure I’m not alone. Jean Tang over at CNN.com has come up with a few ideas to help you live your forbidden fantasy. So, if you’re into envy, gluttony, greed, lust, pride, sloth or wrath, there’s a destination that will cater to your basest of desires.

Crave a step up in society (envy) as a helicopter shepherds you above the opulent homes of the wealthy Los Angeles ‘burbs, and gaze upon the celeb digs that you’ll never call home. Or, fill your stomach to the point of bursting (gluttony) on an 18 lb. hamburger at Bubi’s in Windsor, Ontario.

A few others:

  • Greed: ogle some of the largest private collections of Renoir, Matisse and Cezanne in the world at the Barnes Foundation in Merion, PA (near Philly)
  • Pride: recreate your body at the affordable Heartland Spa in Gilman, IL; two nights for two peopl start below $800
  • Sloth: Define your own movie marathon at The Roxbury in the Catskills from a 400-disk collection, and then do nothing but watch
  • Wrath: Kick ass and take names on the mean San Francisco streats with a bout of Muay Thai (Thai boxing) at Fairtex Muay Thai Fitness
  • Lust: CNN sends you to the obvious: Hedonism; I won’t bore you with the details

[Thanks, CNN, for helping us all indulge]

Cockpit Chronicles: Flying around Hanna and Ike

by Kent Wien on

I couldn’t believe my timing. A four-day trip to the Caribbean with Hurricanes Hanna and Ike scheduled to be right in our way for almost every leg.

Would some of the flights get canceled? And if not, how far out of the way would we be flight planned to stay away from these storms?

This job tends to stay interesting if only because no two trips are alike, even if they take you to the same destinations. Some might think there’s a lot of monotony in flying a plane, but even if the destinations remain the same, there are always new challenges such as adverse weather, different ATC requests, or small mechanical issues to contend with. Not to mention the variety of pilots and flight attendants you might be working with.

I pulled up the satellite weather before leaving for the airport, knowing that it would be impossible to see the big picture of this storm once we’re inflight. While our airborne radar can keep us away from the bumps, it can’t give us an idea of the actual conditions until we’re within a few hundred miles or less of the storm.

The first leg, from Boston to Miami wouldn’t be a problem at all. It was the second leg, from Miami to Caracas that might be interesting. Before departing, my guess was that we’d be flight planned south over Cuba and then Jamaica before turning toward Venezuela.

Sure enough, as you can see from this satellite view below, we were sent around the west side of Hanna. The ride from Miami to Caracas turned out to be rather smooth, with almost all of the clouds associated with the outer edge of the storm well below us.


After our layover of 14 hours in Caracas, Hanna was sure to move west, but would it now impact our route of flight to Philadelphia?

I looked at the weather online while watching a little of Hugo Chavez on the T.V. in my room. If I could only speak Spanish, I’m sure it would have been far more interesting. I’m very thankful for the free internet, though, even if it isn’t much faster than a dial up connection at home.

The next morning the leg from Caracas to San Juan had little in the way of weather. We deviated around a few puffy build-ups over Puerto Rico, but the ride was smooth all the way there.

But the San Juan to PHL leg looked more interesting. Was Hanna breaking up? I couldn’t imagine a great ride, even if it looked like the storm was taking a rest off the east coast.

We had the seatbelt sign on for most of our second leg to PHL, but the ride wasn’t too bad. Looking at the satellite picture above, it seemed we managed to find a nice gap between the scattered storm. Four out of six legs finished and we still hadn’t been affected too much by Hanna. But what would Ike look like when we flew south in 36 hours?

We’d be staying downtown in Philadelphia for two nights–a rare long layover–before leaving on the 4th day of the trip early in the morning. Philadelphia has plenty of great things to do, I’m sure, but I couldn’t get past the Reading Terminal, a converted train terminal that has been made into a market in the heart of the city.

If you’ve ever been to Seattle’s Pike Place Market, well, this is all that except larger. Flowers, fresh fish, chocolate, books, spices, vegetables are all for sale, mixed in with a few restaurants selling crepes, gyros and my personal favorite, a turkey sandwich shop. I even had breakfast at a diner run by the Amish. Unfortunately, the diner is only open 4 days of the week.

This market has everything. Even chocolate covered potato chips:

I passed on those.

Hanna was approaching Philadelphia on the morning of our departure, but it wouldn’t arrive until a few hours after we left. It was Ike that was now directly in our way for our leg from PHL to San Juan.

As I was doing the walk-around inspection, one of the rampers asked me how we were going to get to San Juan with Ike right on top of the island.

I told him I was wondering the same thing earlier that morning, but the latest latest satellite view that showed Ike a few hundred miles north of the island. If it were covering the area where we were landing, there’s no way we would have been flying that trip.

I grabbed my iPhone and showed him the current weather. (wasn’t there a commercial about this?)

Essentially, we’d be flying from Hanna to Ike, landing in San Juan, before flying north around Ike again to Boston. Our eventual route of flight to San Juan and then up to Boston looked like this:

We were originally flight planned to pass to the east of Ike before working our way into San Juan. Just 30 minutes north of the storm, ATC gave us the option of passing to the west of the storm. Captain Mark and I saw far more blue sky to the west, so we turned right and worked our way around it, sending messages regularly en-route to our dispatcher to let him know that we were getting a very smooth ride this way.

His perspective is similar to the photo you see above, so he sent us a message which prints out in the cockpit.

“Your view of Ike must be spectacular.” His message said.

But it really wasn’t that impressive. I snapped a few pictures at that moment, which shows how the view from a satellite picture versus actually being there can be very different. In a sense, the dispatcher had a better view of the intensity of the storm, but we had a more detailed understanding of how we could stay out of the rough air with our weather radar and simply avoiding any of the clouds associated with the storm.

Here’s the view from our radar:

And this was the view out the window as we approached Ike. Not really that impressive, is it?

Amazingly, I came across this picture which shows Ike from the International Space Station taken around the same time we were flying around it. It’s hard to imagine a tiny little airplane passing on the left of the storm as seen from that space shot. Note the less clear route to the right in that NASA photo.

Staying to the west of the storm turned out to be a great move. We heard a Continental flight complain about moderate turbulence east of Ike on the air-to-air frequency, but we were in the clear with a smooth ride to the west.

Unfortunately for the flight back to Boston, we would have to go around Ike to the east, since the storm had moved further to the west, closing off our earlier route.

We spent the fi
rst hour in and out of some high clouds, and while the ride was worse, it wasn’t anything more than annoying. I’ve learned from some of the questions submitted to the Plane Answers feature that many passengers are extremely nervous while flying in any kind of bumps. So we really do our best to find a better altitude or different route for a smoother ride, even if it means using more fuel for that leg.

In all, I learned that maybe it’s better to be flying around Ike and Hanna than sitting on the ground in your non-moveable home praying that the storm misses you. I really feel for those people from Haiti to Houston that were affected by these two monster hurricanes.

In the next Cockpit Chronicles, we’ll go to Port-au-Prince Haiti, which may have seen the worst of Hurricane Hanna just a few days earlier.

I’m thankful to live in New Hampshire, a state that rarely sees any significant weather other than the occasional ‘noreaster’ that dumps a few feet of snow. And while Hanna did make it through our area, it only managed to give us a few inches of rain before finally breaking up over the Atlantic.

Cockpit Chronicles takes you along on some of Kent’s trips as an international co-pilot on the Boeing 757 and 767 based in Boston.

American city with the ugliest locals? Philadelphia

by Jeffrey White on

Travel + Leisure magazine has just published its annual “America’s Favorite Cities” survey, which ranks U.S. metropolises in a variety of a categories, from food, nightlife and public transportation to quality of life, shopping and, yes, the attractiveness of the local population.

Of course, of the 25 cities surveyed, somebody has to come in last in the categories, and in the “attractiveness” category, the City of Brotherly Love finishes 25th. Philly also finished second to last for “stylish locals,” which I suppose is somewhat related, and dead last as a destination for “active people.”

Ouch. But Philly has company: New Orleans, Atlanta, Orlando, Washington, D.C., San Antonio, Santa Fe, Dallas, Boston and Chicago rounded out the cities with the least attractive populations.

The converse?

T+L readers ranked Miami as having the most attractive locals. San Diego, Austin, Charleston, Honolulu, L.A., San Francisco, Minneapolis, New York and Denver complete the top 10 in that category.

See how the cities compared in other categories here.

What are the 10 Richest Cities in America?


Ten top cities in the U.S. for making a living. Tourist spot in each

by Jamie Rhein on

There is a newly published Forbes.com article on the top 10 cities for making a living in the United States. Each has something to offer travelers as well. Here are the top cities and one place to go to in each. These are the first places that immediately came to mind. It’s an odd assortment.

1. Houston, Texas. I’ve been to the Holocaust Museum in Los Angeles and found it incredibly worthwhile and moving. From the description of the Holocaust Museum in Houston, it sounds similar, although there is a section that includes first person accounts of the Holocaust survivors who live in the city.

2. Minneapolis, Minnesota. As I’ve posted before, the outdoor art in Minneapolis is fantastic, particularly, the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden.

3. Boston, Massachusetts. The Freedom Trail that winds through the old part of Boston highlights the important places during the American Revolution. Here’s a tour that looks like a fun way to take it in. When I walked the Freedom Trail in Girl Scouts, we were on our own. I wish we had been on this tour.

4. Washington, D.C. For my next trip to D.C., I’d take Jeremy’s suggestion and head to the Brickskeller, a beer lover’s paradise. Sure, I’d take in the sites, many I’ve seen before, but Jeremy’s post offers something new.

5. New York City When I was sweltering in line in Central Park at the Delacorte Theater, not getting tickets to “Hair,” an experience that I recounted in a recent post, a Danish man and his daughter visiting NYC wanted recommendations on what to see. I suggested Ellis Island. The ferry trip there also swings by Liberty Island for a close look at the Statue of Liberty, and the Ellis Island Immigration Museum is superb.

6. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. I’ve only driven through this city, but have plans to visit the Andy Warhol Museum one fine day.

7. San Francisco, California. I must have a thing for taking boats to landmarks. I just love the tour of Alcatraz Island, that includes the famous prison that has been the backdrop for escape stories and intrigue.

8. Dallas, Texas. I went here to attend a cousin’s wedding and picked historic Dealey Plaza, the location of the grassy knoll and the Texas Book Depository, the scene of John F. Kennedy’s assassination, as my must-head-to-before-I-leave-town destination.

9. Milwaukee, Wisconsin. It’s not that I am overly fond of beer drinking, but the Miller Brewing Factory tour of is a lot of fun, particularly if there is a polka band involved.

10. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The Liberty Bell may be just a bell, but there’s something about that crack in it that makes for an icon to see if you can swing it.

To find out why these cities are top notch for making a living, read the article. One hint: It involves money.