Meet the Chefs Reimagining the Cheesesteak

Sahbyy Food’s lemongrass cheesesteak (left); Taste Cheesesteak Bar owner Kevin Dolce / Photography by Gene Smirnov

Welcome to Cheesesteak 2.0. A new era of Philly’s iconic sandwich is upon us, and to celebrate, we’re taking a look at the movers and makers redefining the genre. Go here to dig in to our full coverage.

Culinary innovation often starts with a touchstone, something eaters can keep as a frame of reference to anchor their brains as their palates are introduced to new flavors. Cheesesteaks have been a staple in this city for nearly a century, and now, with the help of immigrants and first-gen Philadelphians, they’re finally getting interesting.

Gojjo

Habtamu Shitaye, Gojjo

Spicy Ethiopian in University City
Inside a former Irish pub, past the dimly lit bar in an unadorned dining room, red tables are covered with plates filled to the brim with rich red chicken and egg stew, fragrant beef tibs, spongy injera, and cheesesteaks. Habtamu Shitaye moved to Philadelphia from Ethiopia and opened Gojjo with his wife, Frehiwot Desta, in 1996, serving traditional dishes from their home country. After sampling the local delicacy in their adopted city, they made their own version, “but I give it a little twist to make it with different spices, to make it tastier,” he says. The twist comes in the form of berbere — a fiery Ethiopian spice blend typically made using red chili peppers, ginger, fenugreek, rosemary, cinnamon, and cloves. (Shitaye prefers to keep his particular blend a secret.) They cook the meat on the grill, and then cook it again in a pan along with the spices before scooping it into a soft roll lined with American cheese. Shitaye says they’ve never advertised the Ethiopian cheesesteak, but in the more than two decades it’s been on the menu, it’s become a classic.

Rosario’s

Margarita Jeronimo, Rosario’s

Mexican magic in Point Breeze and Cheltenham
Soon after Margarita Jeronimo (pictured) and Aaron Del Rosario opened Rosario’s in Point Breeze in 2011, they realized that the signature ingredients tucked into a soft corn tortilla to make a taco also translated to pizza and cheesesteaks. At first the couple sold only traditional Mexican foods, but they soon added a standard cheese pizza to the menu to appeal to neighborhood tastes. Del Rosario later tinkered with the pizza recipe, adding some of the ingredients he had on hand to make tacos: chipotle sauce, jalapeños, and avocado. The Mexican-style pizzas were popular, and — after working too many double shifts at the shop and eating too many cheesesteaks from neighborhood delis — Del Rosario eventually added the same ingredients to his own version of the sandwich. He started with pickled jalapeños, and then tried spicy red chipotle sauce. “I need sauce, because the cheesesteak, it kind of gets dry,” he says. Now the shop sells three versions of Mexican-inspired steaks, made with ingredients like guacamole, black bean puree, pico de gallo, and Chihuahua cheese. “It’s the same cheese that we use for the quesadillas,” says Jeronimo. “That cheese is more creamy, and a little greasy, but it has a lot of flavor.”

Sahbyy Food

Pidor Yang, Sahbyy Food

Fresh Cambodian at FDR Park’s Southeast Asian Market
After an unsuccessful sales day at a Cambodian New Year event left a dispirited Pidor Yang with a surplus of lemongrass beef skewers, her husband, Yen, made himself dinner with some of the leftovers. He filled a roll with the meat, cheddar cheese, papaya salad, and her homemade pepper chips. “He called me after he ate and said, ‘I think we have something really, really good.’” she says. Yang has a background working in hotels, but her culinary experience is rooted in the kitchen with her family. There, she learned the foundations of Cambodian cooking, including kreung, the aromatic paste that would eventually become the secret sauce for Sahbyy Food’s cheesesteaks. The herb paste (lemongrass, galangal root, makrut lime leaf, garlic, and turmeric) is the marinade for the beef or chicken. It’s traditionally made in a mortar and pestle, but Yang whips up her proprietary mix in the blender in the big batches she needs to feed the long lines it draws to her stand at FDR Park’s Southeast Asian Market. As for all good sandwiches, there’s a strict method: Lightly toast the inside of the roll, and, after it’s toasted, put the cheddar cheese on first, “because it’s an ode back to Philadelphia, so you have to have that Whiziness to it.” Next, she adds the meat, a tangle of cool papaya salad, and the pepper chips (pepper skin that she cooks in a few ways to transform it into a spicy or mild chip), and garnishes it with a heap of cilantro.

Taste Cheesesteak Bar

Kevin Dolce, Taste Cheesesteak Bar

Haitian heat in Center City
Kevin Dolce has always liked cheesesteaks, but if pressed, he’ll tell you that most lack a depth of flavor. The Mount Airy native fixed that when he started making his own, using a single ingredient that was a staple on his childhood table: Haitian epis, a vivid green seasoning made with a blend of peppers, garlic, onion, parsley, and scallions. At Taste Cheesesteak Bar, Dolce’s modern Center City restaurant, meats for every cheesesteak are doused in epis first — that includes beef and chicken as well as salmon and oxtail. The oxtail cheesesteak gets nearly one pound of meat, no pork or beef fillers. The oxtail is slow-cooked for up to seven hours, hand-shredded off the bone, and piled into a seeded Liscio’s roll with fried peppers and onions and Cooper Sharp cheese. The result is a flavor bomb unlike any other cheesesteak. “It just comes from a cultural standpoint,” he says. “Being Haitian, I’m used to having different seasonings on my food.”

Still Hungry?

Try the bulgogi cheesesteak at Korea Taqueria in Grays Ferry, the bistek cheesesteak at Tabachoy in Bella Vista, or the masala cheesesteak at Kabobeesh in University City, or order from the spicy menu at Indian-owned Little Sicily II in Pennsport.

>> Click here to return to Cheeseteak 2.0

Published as “Generation Next” in the April 2025 issue of Philadelphia magazine.