{"id":962238,"date":"2026-07-27T10:18:19","date_gmt":"2026-07-27T10:18:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/962238\/"},"modified":"2026-07-27T10:18:19","modified_gmt":"2026-07-27T10:18:19","slug":"top-philly-cheesesteak-makers-balance-tradition-and-reinvention","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/962238\/","title":{"rendered":"Top Philly cheesesteak-makers balance tradition and reinvention\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"

Love Philly? So do we. Let\u2019s be friends. Sign up for the Billy Penn newsletter today<\/a>.<\/p>\n

After John Bucci Jr. took over his family\u2019s roast pork shack in South Philly in the late 1980s, one of the changes he made was to revamp their rarely-ordered cheesesteak.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy dad, God love him, God rest his soul, he made the worst cheesesteak,\u201d Bucci recalled. \u201cIt was like two, four ounces of frozen meat. He would put it on the grill. He would cook it for a little bit. Put two slices of cheese, and he would put it on a roll. And it was only two and a quarter.\u201d<\/p>\n

At a panel discussion of Philadelphia cheesesteak-makers in Center City on Thursday, he described the new sandwich he came up with: 12 ounces of fresh-cut meat, six or seven slices of cheese, on a fresh roll \u2014 and sold for $6.75, triple the old price.<\/p>\n

His father \u201chit the roof,\u201d Bucci said. \u201cLike, the only bigger argument we had was when we started selling bottled water. He was like, \u2018Why would you buy bottled water? It comes out of the spigot, you know.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

It took more than a decade, but eventually the revamp paid off. In a now-famous story,<\/a> four Lower Merion High School students teamed up with Inquirer food critic Craig LaBan in 2002 to sample dozens of cheesesteaks, and they decided the offering from John\u2019s Roast Pork indisputably the best.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had a line down the street for months, and our lives there were never the same,\u201d Bucci said.<\/p>\n

Recovering from crises<\/p>\n

He and four other cheesesteak entrepreneurs told stories about the highlights \u2014 and occasional low points \u2014 of making and selling Philly\u2019s most famous dish<\/a> at an event organized by the Center City Business Association. Held at City Winery, it was titled \u201cLunch WHIZ the City\u2019s Leaders.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ken Silver, owner of the hugely popular Jim\u2019s South Street, described the emotional rollercoaster and financial challenges of a 2022 fire that gutted his building<\/a>, as well as the impact on surrounding businesses.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you\u2019re responsible for bringing almost a million people to a corner in a neighborhood, and you\u2019re suddenly gone, the neighborhood suffers around you, for sure,\u201d said Silver, who is also board chair at the South Street Headhouse District organization. \u201cLots of places closed in the two years that we were closed, and it was really sobering.\u201d<\/p>\n

Silver\u2019s mom insisted the half-century-old business stay on South Street, and he invested $2 million of his own money to rebuild, he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

When they finally reopened, \u201cwe had a line back to Bainbridge Street,\u201d he recalled. \u201cThey just wanted to be part of the reopening. That was probably the best feeling ever. You learn that you\u2019re more than just a cheesesteak shop. You\u2019re part of people\u2019s history and part of people\u2019s expectations.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"Councilmember Mark Squilla, Jim\u2019s owner Ken Silver, and Isaiah and Julia Zagar cutting the ribbon at the reopening of Jim\u2019s Steaks in May 2024. (Ali Mohsen\/Billy Penn)<\/p>\n

Several of the shopowners described the impact of the pandemic on their businesses, both for good and bad. Panel moderator Colin Comstock, creator of the Cheesesteak City<\/a> documentary series, described panelist Nish Patel as a \u201cCOVID winner\u201d for successfully pivoting his business.<\/p>\n

Patel and his business partner had bought Del Rossi\u2019s in Northern Liberties two weeks before the pandemic hit, only to see sales drop by half when nearby offices went dark, he said. They responded by working to make Del Rossi\u2019s a destination rather than just another sandwich shop.<\/p>\n

First they changed up their pizza to make it more crispy and \u201cupscale,\u201d and eventually they started baking their own bread<\/a> because \u201cthat was a new hot thing to do. If you made your own bread, you were solidified in the city,\u201d Patel said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

A few months later, Barstool Sports\u2019 Dave Portnoy gave Del Rossi\u2019s a rave review<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cI remember getting the call after Portnoy came. I was just about to take a nap on my couch, and didn\u2019t take a nap for another two months after that,\u201d Patel said. Demand for his cheesesteaks exploded. \u201cIt was logistically very challenging to scale up to those volumes, but everyone stepped up, and we hired more people, the right people, and we were able to build up to that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tapping into family heritage<\/p>\n

Pidor Yang of Sahbyy Food said she got into the cheesesteak game after she was laid off during the pandemic and struggled to sell lemongrass beef skewers at a Cambodian New Year event.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Back at home, her husband whipped up a sandwich with leftover beef, cheddar cheese, papaya salad, and her homemade pepper chips. After some polishing it proved to be a big hit at the Southeastern Asian Market in FDR Park, thanks in part to favorable coverage in Philadelphia Magazine and on social media.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy intention was to sell my pepper chips, but when we tasted the cheesesteak, I was like, \u2018Okay, what can we do with this?\u2019 And my husband said, \u2018Nothing. We\u2019re just going to let it grow from itself,\u2019 and it\u2019s history from there,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Yang, who now has a space at Gather Food Hall in University City<\/a>, said a key element that distinguishes her cheesesteak is kroeung, a traditional Cambodian paste of lemongrass, galangal root, makrut lime leaf, garlic and turmeric that she uses to marinate the meat.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Tapping into family heritage has also been an important strategy for Kevin Dolce, whose parents are from Haiti.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Dolce, who owns Taste Cheesesteak Bar on JFK Boulevard and other restaurants, said he uses Haitian epis sauce to marinate all the proteins in the cheesesteaks he developed \u2014 beef, jerk chicken, salmon, and ox tail. He also has a veggie steak with cauliflower, portobello mushroom and fresh cucumber.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wanted to create something from my culture, my heritage, my background. We really had to dig deep in, trying to create something a bit more innovative that doesn\u2019t differentiate from the traditional cheesesteak,\u201d he said. \u201cWe are a very opinionated city, and I didn\u2019t want to steer too far away from it. So what we did do is we tried to revolutionize it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Balancing tradition and change<\/p>\n

A theme that emerged during the discussion was the importance of embracing change to meet customers\u2019 needs and maintain a successful business, even when it means setting aside family traditions or accepting practices you\u2019d previously scorned, like DoorDash and UberEats orders.<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery time I make a change there, I have to, like, reach deep into the back of my mind and think, what would my father do?\u201d said Silver, who took over the shop from his late dad 15 years ago.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cUsed to be, somebody said, \u2018You have chicken cheese steak?\u2019 and the whole counter would yell out, \u2018Chicken?! We sell cheesesteaks. Chicken isn\u2019t a steak,\u2019\u201d he said. \u201cThis spring we launched chicken for the first time. We just had to.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another change Silver made when he took over was to switch from cooking the meat in lard to using beef tallow, so that customers who expected all beef didn\u2019t get some pork in their sandwich as well.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe made the moves that we felt that we had to do to come into what is now expected. You try to honor the traditions, but at the same time, you have to change,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\"\"Vickie Bucci, John Bucci\u2019s wife, works 40 to 50 hours a week at John\u2019s Roast Pork. November 2022. (Emma Lee\/WHYY)<\/p>\n

He and the others also marveled at the sudden emergence of Cooper Sharp as a must-have cheese in recent years, after decades of depending on Cheez Whiz sauce, American and provolone.<\/p>\n

\u201cCooper Sharp cheese came out of nowhere, by the way. I don\u2019t know where it came from,\u201d Dolce said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was so funny, because I eventually had to\u201d adopt it, Bucci said. \u201cYou know, we don\u2019t do cheez whiz. It\u2019s just personal preference. I\u2019m not a fan of cheese whiz. But we did [add] Cooper Sharp. I couldn\u2019t believe it \u2014 I went home and it was on the news. It was on Channel 6 and on Channel 10 News. I was like, it must have been a slow news day.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Love Philly? So do we. Let\u2019s be friends. Sign up for the Billy Penn newsletter today. After John…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":962239,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5132],"tags":[5229,64,386881,162289,386882,386883,990,386884,386885,386886,58650,1448,2830,1311,386887,386888,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":["post-962238","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-philadelphia","tag-america","tag-business","tag-center-city-business-association","tag-cheesesteak","tag-chicken-cheesesteak","tag-del-rossis-cheesesteak","tag-food","tag-jims-south-street","tag-jims-steaks-south-street","tag-johns-roast-pork","tag-ken-silver","tag-pa","tag-pennsylvania","tag-philadelphia","tag-salmon-cheesesteaks","tag-southeast-asian-market","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116991435788780028","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/962238","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=962238"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/962238\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/962239"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=962238"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=962238"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=962238"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}