Where to Find a Good Cheesesteak in Philadelphia Now That You Finally Dumped Ted, Who Did Not Want to Eat One
When you come to Philadelphia, you will at some point inevitably feel like you need to try the cheesesteak.
This urge will be in spite of yourself. When your travel companion and boyfriend of six months, Ted, asks where you want to eat, you form a question mark with your eyebrows and phrase the impulse as a question: “I feel like I need to try the cheesesteak?” Ted frowns like he’s already got indigestion from it and says something about how “a cheesesteak sounds kind of heavy” and even though he’s talking about the sandwich, it feels like he’s talking about your ass. Slowly all of your previously noted yellow flags about Ted ripen to red. This is how it starts. First he’s disapproving of your diet; what’s next, your friend group? Probably. And so you break up with Ted.
You to take a few minutes to reorient yourself with your new reality. Ted’s gone, which means a lot of time has freed up. Breathe a sigh of relief that you no longer have to go to the Mütter Museum, about which you were already having panic attacks. But, were the panic attacks actually about the gallery of horrors hiding inside the museum, or that you were already intuiting that Ted never really seemed to care about your wants? You may not know the answer, but you do know that your wants now include a sweaty sandwich to salve your salty soul.
You open Yelp and already feel the pangs of separation from an intimate partner; you never used Yelp before Ted. You hated the thought of flippantly reducing a stranger’s livelihood to a number between one and five, but Ted refused to eat anywhere under four stars. You delete the app, but only after settling on a place with a name like My Cousin Sal’s (sounds local but it’s not) or The El (sounds hip but it’s not) or some stupid nouveau pop-up, occupying the former space of an iconic Philly spot that permanently closed six months into the pandemic.
The fact that someone got paid actual American dollars to implement a restaurant design concept more worn-out than the reclaimed wood used to erect it registers with you immediately upon entering, as you feign that your beeline through someone’s iPhone photoshoot of their hoagie-wielding influencer-aspirant date posing in front of a selfie wall of a painting of some cheesesteaks in the shape of butterfly wings was accidental.
Your cheesesteak will cost $14.95. Add a glass-bottled, locally-sourced sparkling vinegar with throwback ’50s-soda-shop-inspired branding on the label and “pomme frites” (French for “Fries that tourists will voluntarily pay a premium for purely on the basis that they don’t know how to pronounce it.” See also: pain aux raisin.) and you’re already $24.95 deep. And they’re actually going to give you the nickel of change, because they’re corporate and they have accountants. This is when you learn the first rule of sandwich shops: any sandwich slinger, hoagie hocker or meat monger that is allocating a portion of their consciousness to keeping a balanced till has taken their eye off the ball.
The architect of your sandwich will be an overeducated, underemployed part-time graphic artist who hates himself and who hates you and who hates his boss. You will mistake his demeanor as “Philly charm,” unaware that he’s a transplant from Ohio by way of New York City who moved to Philly because his art school loans are about to go into repayment.
You eat half the sandwich before the realization that you got hosed slowly sets in. You’re not sure whether to blame Philadelphia, or the jaded visual-artist-turned-sandwich-artist, or Ted for not successfully talking you out of it before getting himself dumped. But someone is at fault here. You catch your eye in the mirror but look away before you spot the guilty party out of the lineup.
The only way to atone for eating the wrong sandwich is to eat the right one. But first, wait at least a day. In the meantime, go on a walk. Eat some plants. Drink lots of water. In other words: digest. You don’t want multiple cheesesteaks backing up.
Distract yourself by downloading a couple dating apps. Yes, it’s too soon. No, it’s not healthy. But you’re having a dark night of the soul. You’re in a strange city for the next three nights and you’re second-guessing recent decisions involving food and love. Every story his a midpoint and you’re in it. But it’s only for a time, because soon enough, a new day will:
Dawn.
The stranger in your hotel room has left (not Ted — who feels more and more like a stranger every minute and is probably already on a flight home — but an actual stranger, from the apps) and you’ve finally had a good bowel movement, in that order. It’s time to take another run at the cheesesteak. But this time, you’ll do it proper.
The first step to finding a good cheesesteak is to situate yourself in Center City. Start walking in any direction until you find a halal cart. You can’t miss them: look for an aluminum apparatus on lawn mower tires, approximately the size of a washing machine, with red and yellow signage and bright flashing lights. It will look like a casino. A meat casino, where everyone wins. Except Ted. Ted would only eat from a food cart if it was in a place like Portland and had a cutesy name like Dom’s Subs.
Inside the cart is a man who has been making cheesesteaks for 30 years. He loves cheesesteaks. He loves you. Order the cheesesteak. Even if it’s not on the menu, they make them.
The sandwich will be $5. It will be perfect. Ted is an idiot.
