In Praise of South Street, the restaurant (in Burbank)

I’m a Philadelphia transplant to Los Angeles, of course. And Philadelphia, my sweet home, has two food cultures, high and low. There is little of note in the middle. If you are in my city with your friends, and you want a nice, medium-priced restaurant to surprise and delight you, forget it. On the high end is Le Bec Fin, the great old man, the Oyster House for plain but perfect seafood, Fountain at the Four Seasons, Morimoto, Studio Kitchen (so I’ve heard), and so on. Fine. But the low! I will take the common food of Philadelphia over any other city in this country. Scrapple, the breakfast pork of the Amish god! Tastykakes! Lox wings! Pizza with sauce from high-season Jersey tomatoes! Hoagies! And the king of roll-foods, the emperor, the Arbiter: the cheesesteak, the love which also destroys.

I have not even tried to find a cheesesteak in California. Like looking for plutonium in a kiddie pool, I always thought. There are only four constraints – the roll, the steak, the onions, and the cheese – but within those – they’re words, really, sandwich genetics – the final expression has a wide expanse of possibility. If the steak is dry, if the grease is pressed out, the cheese is bland, the roll is dense, if the onions are opaque – these are just a few possibilities, and all lead to disaster, ruin, tears.

There are two places where you can get a Philly cheesesteak in California. South Street, the small chain is called, and there’s one in Westwood and one in Burbank. I went to the Burbank one and took my order to go. I then sat in the car and tore through half of it because I couldn’t help myself. They fly the dough in from Amoroso’s and finish it in their ovens daily. The meat, if anything, is too high-quality. My main quibble is that the meat is too proportionate to roll. There is a rational amount of meat. In Philly, often these things are served open-faced with so much steak that you can barely get the damn thing closed or even fully into your mouth, and grease runs down your chin, and you feel as a mighty hunter, a warrior. But that’s a minor thing. The place howls, the cheesesteak costs $5.75, and they have Tastykakes, although they were out of Butterscotch Krimpets. If you’re in Burbank and you go to Subway for a carne asada instead of going down to Victory and Olive for a cheesesteak, you’re out of your fucking mind.

While I’m on the subject of Philly, I want to say this, which is something I realized in the car ride home from the restaurant: my sophistication, my acceptance, the bonhomie I display for people who don’t know me well – all this is a disease of travel, because at bottom I am from Philly, I am rough, and believe me: I have terrible appetites.