This was a little bit of a drive. We’re getting further from Philly…is this even cheesesteak territory anymore? There’s a pretty large menu, including specialty steaks, burgers, dogs, wings, and even a chopped cheese (I knew we were encroaching on NY!).
There are lots of options; bread: seeded or not, garlic bread, seeded garlic bread, and cheese: whiz, provolone, American, mozz, and Cooper. I got a seeded garlic roll with Cooper Sharp and fried onions. The sandwich is a generous size, but not huge. This looks more like a fork and knife open faced sandwich. As you can see from the picture, this sandwich is overstuffed, but not even as much as some of the photos I have seen in other reviews.
The bread is excellent. It’s a perfectly crispy Italian-style garlic bread roll with nicely toasted sesame seeds. The garlicky, buttery flavor permeates throughout the whole sandwich. With the crispness, there is a trade off - this bread is supporting a massive pile of juicy, cheesy meat, and eventually the seam blew out.
The amount of Cooper Sharp is just right, and the cheese is perfectly melted and creamy but mostly just on top of the sandwich. Interestingly the garlic from the bread is such a strong flavor, that the distinct flavor of the Cooper is not really that obvious. The onions were finely chopped, there’s a lot of them, and unlike the cheese, they really add to the overall taste of the sandwich.
The meat chop is inconsistent. There are many finely chopped pieces, but also some significantly larger chunks. That inconsistency makes the end result a little bit hard to chew since the finer pieces are cooked a little bit more tender than the chunkier pieces. Normally I would prefer a crispiness to the meat, but this is fairly uniformly soft and that works here, because it contrasts well with the crispy garlic bread. The meat is also well seasoned. Or is that the garlic salt from the bread? As a bonus, the meat has a strong beefy flavor. The menu proudly boasts 100% ribeye and you can tell!
This is an incredible meal. The bread is unique and sets this apart from everywhere else.
▣ FROM THE SPOT
1 ADDITIONAL PHOTO
