The Philly Cheesesteak Story: From Hot Dog Cart to Global Icon

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

If you walked up to a food cart in South Philadelphia in like 1935 or even 1945 and ordered the city's most famous culinary export, you would essentially be handed a lie.

SPEAKER_2 (0:12)

Well, a very delicious lie, but yeah, a lie for sure.

SPEAKER_1 (0:15)

Right, exactly. Or at the very least, you'd be handed a sandwich that was completely missing its absolute most famous ingredient.

SPEAKER_2 (0:23)

Because the sandwich that is universally known and fiercely protected today is the cheesesteak. It didn't contain a single drop of dairy for the first 20 years of its existence.

SPEAKER_1 (0:33)

Which is just wild to think about. I mean, it completely flips the script on what most of us think we know about this food.

SPEAKER_2 (0:40)

It really is one of the great historical ironies of American street food.

SPEAKER_1 (0:44)

Totally.

SPEAKER_2 (0:44)

The identity of this dish is so completely, like inextricably linked with the cheese. I mean, it's literally right there in the name.

SPEAKER_1 (0:51)

Yeah, you can't have a cheesesteak without cheese.

SPEAKER_2 (0:54)

Right. Yet the entire foundation of the sandwich was built, and it became this massive local hit completely without it.

SPEAKER_1 (1:01)

So today we are taking a stack of research sourced from Wikipedia's deep dive on the cheesesteak, and we are going to look past the grease and the foil wrappers.

SPEAKER_2 (1:10)

We're getting into the good stuff.

SPEAKER_1 (1:12)

Oh yeah. We are looking at a fierce cultural debate, a history of accidental genius, and the global evolution of a beloved regional fast food.

SPEAKER_2 (1:22)

It is quite the journey.

SPEAKER_1 (1:23)

Okay, let's unpack this, because to figure out how we got to this iconic sandwich, we actually have to start at, of all places, a hot dog stand.

SPEAKER_2 (1:31)

We do. If we transport ourselves back to the early 1930s, we find two brothers, Pat and Harry Olivieri, and they are running this humble hot dog cart near South Philadelphia's Italian Market.

SPEAKER_1 (1:43)

Which, I mean, if you've ever worked around the exact same food day in and day out, you know that eventually palate fatigue sets in.

SPEAKER_2 (1:50)

Oh, absolutely. You want literally anything else for lunch. You just get so sick of hot dogs.

SPEAKER_1 (1:54)

Exactly. So instead of boiling another frankfurter for themselves, they decide to improvise.

SPEAKER_2 (2:00)

Yeah. The sources say they grabbed some beef, chopped it up, threw it onto their hot dog griddle with some onions and just, you know, tossed the whole combination onto an Italian roll.

SPEAKER_1 (2:09)

It wasn't some grand business strategy to corner the sandwich market.

SPEAKER_2 (2:12)

Not at all. It was just two guys trying to feed themselves something different on a random Tuesday.

SPEAKER_1 (2:18)

And that organic improvisation is exactly how culinary landmarks are born, isn't it?

SPEAKER_2 (2:23)

It really is. They rarely start in these pristine corporate test kitchens with like focus groups.

They start as a rapid, accidental response to an immediate need.

SPEAKER_1 (2:33)

Right. They were just hungry.

SPEAKER_2 (2:34)

Exactly. By chopping the beef, they were likely trying to cook it as fast as possible on a flat top that was designed for hot dogs.

SPEAKER_1 (2:42)

Oh, that makes sense. Yeah.

SPEAKER_2 (2:43)

Well, simultaneously tenderizing what might have been a cheaper cut of meat. But the real turning point wasn't the brothers eating it.

SPEAKER_1 (2:50)

Right. It was when a local cab driver pulled up to their cart.

SPEAKER_2 (2:53)

The legendary cab driver.

SPEAKER_1 (2:55)

Yeah. He smells this savory cloud of beef and caramelizing onions sizzling away, and he basically tells them to forget the hot dog.

SPEAKER_2 (3:02)

He's like, whatever you're eating, I want that.

SPEAKER_1 (3:04)

Exactly. He wants to buy whatever they are making for themselves.

SPEAKER_2 (3:07)

So he buys it, eats it, and immediately recognizes the potential. He tells the Olivieri brothers they need to stop selling hot dogs entirely.

SPEAKER_1 (3:16)

Just drop the hot dogs and focus exclusively on this new chopped steak creation.

SPEAKER_2 (3:20)

They actually listen to him, which is the crazy part.

SPEAKER_1 (3:24)

Yeah. The sandwich was an absolute smash hit in the neighborhood. It was so successful that Pat eventually moved on from the cart and opened his own brick and mortar restaurant.

SPEAKER_2 (3:33)

Which is famously Pat's King of Steaks.

SPEAKER_1 (3:36)

Right. It's remarkably still operating today. But I'm looking at this 20-year gap in the timeline and it's really bothering me.

SPEAKER_2 (3:44)

The cheese gap.

SPEAKER_1 (3:45)

Yes, the cheese gap. Wait, if this was the 1930s and the sandwich didn't have cheese yet, isn't that advertising?

SPEAKER_2 (3:53)

Well, they just called it a steak sandwich back then.