#2 Steak and Whiz

I kind of got fucked at Tat's today.  And I know I shouldn't use 'fuck' as a pejorative because it promotes a culture of sexual violence... but I kind of got fucked.  I thought briefly about whether I should real-deal this post or not.  This is supposed to be an homage to Tat's as much as it is a document of my misadventures with sandwiches. In the end it's just a fucking sandwich, though, and if I have to gloss over the nasty bits then what's the point?

I knew that my first lunch menu sandwich had to be the cheesesteak.  It was my original go-to, and it's the flagship item on the menu. I like mine with provolone, but whiz is the blue collar holy grail, and I couldn't imagine skipping it in favor of anything else.  Steak and cheeze whiz on a bun.  Shit.

I went to Philly Boys in SODO with my boy Colin about a week ago to prep for this. The only way I know to prep for a cheesesteak is with a cheesesteak.  I did the Philly Boys steak with whiz, too, thinking I'd go apples-to-apples.  It was delicious, as usual, although the meat/whiz ratio was off in favor of the whiz, and if you're going to fall on one side of that spectrum, cheese-heavy is the wrong one.

So I got to Tat's at 11:30am on the dot, right before the line usually balloons.  It's been well over a year since I got a steak sandwich from this place and I'd forgotten that they don't do onions standard: it's steak and cheese on a roll, and you can add onions, mushrooms, sweet peppers, hot peppers, or fried peppers.  I've had cheesesteaks in Philadelphia, I've had them all over the place.  I'm not claiming to be an expert, but I've been around the block with this type of sandwich.  Peppers are one thing, but I'm not sure what kind of idiot orders one without onions...

...but if that's the standard here, then that's what I'm getting.  So: this kind of idiot.

They called order 178 and I walked up closer to the counter, expecting to be out of there and walking back to my office a few blocks away shortly.  Nope.  182, 186, 184... up to 190, and still no sign of my sandwich.  It was another 10+ minutes of other people walking away with their food while I waited.  Shit happens, food service is tough, those guys are slammed.  I tried to write it off.

Then line cook working the grill looked over the counter and gave me a sad, beaten dog kind of look as he handed my sandwich to the nice lady who finished and wrapped it.  I walked out of there with a hot sandwich in my hand, firmly believing that the glitch in my day was over and that in 5 minutes I'd be engulfed in sandwich bliss and have forgotten it ever happened.

Maybe it's just me, but I think a cheesesteak is best if you give it a few minutes.  Let the cheese melt into the meat like a sauce into pasta.  Give the roll a minute to steam in the wrapper.  So if I don't have far to go sometimes I prefer to take a steak to go rather than eating it there.

I got back to my office and unraveled the paper.  To find this.

That doesn't look right.  And it's not like I haven't had this sandwich, from this place, many, many times before.

I'm not from Philly, I don't really have a place to talk about what's authentic or not.  What I'm looking for in a cheesesteak is this: very thin sliced beef cooked on a hot grill, and cut and turned while it's cooking so that the meat gets a bit of sear without steaming.  A well cooked Philly-style steak is the closest thing Americans have to wok hay.  Onions are a whole different thing, they should be soft and sweet, but not caramelized or limp.  The roll needs to be soft, but solid enough to hold up to the sandwich, and there are particular proportions of cheese to meat to bun.

This beef was grey, like it had been boiled.  No sear.  And the texture was way off, with lots of big chunks.  The roll had completely fallen apart, and I could even hold the sandwich halves up to eat them properly.  I went through about 6 napkins trying to get half the sandwich down and then gave up.  It wasn't worth the effort.  It was hands-down one of the worst cheesesteaks I'd ever paid money for, and from a shop which is undeniably one of the better sandwich shops in town.

So today Tat's fucked me.  I'll be back again, though, probably sooner rather than later.