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After John Bucci Jr. took over his family’s roast pork shack in South Philly in the late 1980s, one of the changes he made was to revamp their rarely-ordered cheesesteak.
“My dad, God love him, God rest his soul, he made the worst cheesesteak,” Bucci recalled. “It 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.”
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 — and sold for $6.75, triple the old price.
His father “hit the roof,” Bucci said. “Like, the only bigger argument we had was when we started selling bottled water. He was like, ‘Why would you buy bottled water? It comes out of the spigot, you know.’”
It took more than a decade, but eventually the revamp paid off. In a now-famous story, 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’s Roast Pork indisputably the best.
“We had a line down the street for months, and our lives there were never the same,” Bucci said.
Recovering from crises
He and four other cheesesteak entrepreneurs told stories about the highlights — and occasional low points — of making and selling Philly’s most famous dish at an event organized by the Center City Business Association. Held at City Winery, it was titled “Lunch WHIZ the City’s Leaders.”
Ken Silver, owner of the hugely popular Jim’s South Street, described the emotional rollercoaster and financial challenges of a 2022 fire that gutted his building, as well as the impact on surrounding businesses.
“When you’re responsible for bringing almost a million people to a corner in a neighborhood, and you’re suddenly gone, the neighborhood suffers around you, for sure,” said Silver, who is also board chair at the South Street Headhouse District organization. “Lots of places closed in the two years that we were closed, and it was really sobering.”
Silver’s mom insisted the half-century-old business stay on South Street, and he invested $2 million of his own money to rebuild, he said.
When they finally reopened, “we had a line back to Bainbridge Street,” he recalled. “They just wanted to be part of the reopening. That was probably the best feeling ever. You learn that you’re more than just a cheesesteak shop. You’re part of people’s history and part of people’s expectations.”
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 documentary series, described panelist Nish Patel as a “COVID winner” for successfully pivoting his business.
Patel and his business partner had bought Del Rossi’s 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’s a destination rather than just another sandwich shop.
First they changed up their pizza to make it more crispy and “upscale,” and eventually they started baking their own bread because “that was a new hot thing to do. If you made your own bread, you were solidified in the city,” Patel said.
A few months later, Barstool Sports’ Dave Portnoy gave Del Rossi’s a rave review.
“I remember getting the call after Portnoy came. I was just about to take a nap on my couch, and didn’t take a nap for another two months after that,” Patel said. Demand for his cheesesteaks exploded. “It 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.”
Tapping into family heritage
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.
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.
“My intention was to sell my pepper chips, but when we tasted the cheesesteak, I was like, ‘Okay, what can we do with this?’ And my husband said, ‘Nothing. We’re just going to let it grow from itself,’ and it’s history from there,” she said.
Yang, who now has a space at Gather Food Hall in University City, 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.
Tapping into family heritage has also been an important strategy for Kevin Dolce, whose parents are from Haiti.
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 — beef, jerk chicken, salmon, and ox tail. He also has a veggie steak with cauliflower, portobello mushroom and fresh cucumber.
“I 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’t differentiate from the traditional cheesesteak,” he said. “We are a very opinionated city, and I didn’t want to steer too far away from it. So what we did do is we tried to revolutionize it.”
Balancing tradition and change
A theme that emerged during the discussion was the importance of embracing change to meet customers’ needs and maintain a successful business, even when it means setting aside family traditions or accepting practices you’d previously scorned, like DoorDash and UberEats orders.
“Every 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?” said Silver, who took over the shop from his late dad 15 years ago.
“Used to be, somebody said, ‘You have chicken cheese steak?’ and the whole counter would yell out, ‘Chicken?! We sell cheesesteaks. Chicken isn’t a steak,’” he said. “This spring we launched chicken for the first time. We just had to.”
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’t get some pork in their sandwich as well.
“We 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,” he said.
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.
“Cooper Sharp cheese came out of nowhere, by the way. I don’t know where it came from,” Dolce said.
“It was so funny, because I eventually had to” adopt it, Bucci said. “You know, we don’t do cheez whiz. It’s just personal preference. I’m not a fan of cheese whiz. But we did [add] Cooper Sharp. I couldn’t believe it — 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.”
