No- not this Jim’s- the West Philly one. The one without any google images.
I couldn’t start writing about food in Philadelphia without paying notice to one hoary standard, the item that people across the nation associate with the city, the cheesesteak. While many here, with justifiable cause, have recently asserted the roast pork sandwich to be the true champion on a soft Italian roll, I can’t entirely turn my back on thinly sliced grilled beef, provolone cheese and properly caramelized onions.
For one, the cheesesteak is largely unavoidable. Unlike the roast pork sandwich, requiring advanced preparation and thus the expectation of a certain number of customers, any neighborhood joint can pull some sliced steak out of the cooler and toss it on their grill to order. As a result, in the city or the suburbs, the cheesesteak is never more than a short walk or drive away.
But in addition to the neighborhood standbys, often pizzerias with a grill to the side, exists a separate category of establishment, the destination cheesesteak emporium. Here, at places with some guy’s first name on the big sign out front, the grill is first and foremost, and meat is almost always cooking on it.
Inspired by the efforts of one sports-talk radio host, and his efforts to sample forty cheesesteaks in forty days, I began thinking about my own personal cheesesteak checklist. With neither a bank account nor arteries equipped for forty in forty, I figured I should, at the very least, get familiar with the options in my own backyard. I jumped in the car and drove deeper into West Philadelphia to the original Jim’s Steaks.
While Jim’s has the name recognition (and signed celebrity promo photos) to match other big boys like Geno’s, Pat’s, and Tony Lukes, most of this recognition undoubtedly stems from the location of its black and white tiled, brightly lit, two level space at the corner of Fourth and South, in a neighborhood bustling with foot traffic on any given weekend night. So, I had no idea what to expect after parking my car down the street from the original Jim’s Steaks on a quiet and unremarkable residential street in the Haddington section of West Philadelphia. Here was a destination name in an unambiguously neighborhood setting. The familiar font on the sign out front reassured me it would be okay to step inside.
Inside was a long, narrow room, with a grill with a sizeable portion of beef and onions sizzling away to my immediate left. Farther along the left side stood the cashier, followed by hoagie making station to the end of the room. On the right side, lining the wall, a counter, with room for ten at the most. One doesn’t go to cheesesteak joints for frills.
Unassuming surroundings aside, the grilling pile of beef reaffirmed the status of Jim’s as a destination establishment, where a steady clientele can be counted upon to keep the beef steadily cooking. And during my mid-afternoon visit, several hours after standard lunchtime, business was indeed brisk. The line didn’t take long, but in twenty minutes of waiting and eating, about a dozen customers passed through the room.
So, how was the steak? In a word, admirable. Chopped to the proper degree of fineness, the meat was hot, not overly greasy, and well-distributed when it went into the long roll, ensuring that the provolone cheese laid at the bottom of the roll was slightly melted by the time I bit into the steak. Caramelized onions, taken from a heaping pile at the end of the grill, were nicely incorporated into the meat. And the classic Amoroso roll, an often underappreciated component of the sandwich, was fresh, soft, but not squishy; an agreeable vessel for the ample filling.
Heading out the door, content with my discovery, I reflected on my earlier dichotomy. Jim’s in West Philly felt like a neighborhood standby but worthy of a drive at the same time. This cheesesteak didn’t change my life, but it helped cut the connection between the product and the hype. Shed of the crowds, neon, and chrome, this was simply a fine, familiar sandwich.
