For the book’s recipes for cheesesteak sandwiches, soup, and salad Click Here!

 

New York is the city that doesn’t sleep; Philadelphia does, except at Pat’s and Geno’s. These two 24/7 businesses are the literal and figurative crossroads of Philadelphia, and a window on it. Everyone goes there at one time or another and so it follows, if you stay there long enough, you will see everything and everyone. At least that was the idea. Here’s the reality of one recent summer Friday.

4:45 a.m. It’s still dark. The smell of fried onions and beef hangs in the air, along with the sound of some demented singing. A not-very-prosperous-looking elderly man in a green baseball cap sits at a table at Pat’s, not eating.

5 a.m. At Geno’s an employee with a cleaning machine has the sidewalk so thick with soap suds it looks like snow. Meanwhile over at Pat’s three employees are sitting at a table speaking animatedly in Spanish, seemingly oblivious to the trash all around.

5:15 a.m. Six college-age kids show up for steaks at Pat’s. They say they left New York City at 3 a.m. One has to be back at work there at 8 so they don’t linger. Meanwhile the Liscio’s bakery guy is hauling trays into Geno’s, the first of two to three deliveries he says they’ll get today.

6 a.m. A Pat’s employee is cleaning the low-tech way – with a broom and a trash barrel on wheels. A middle-aged guy with a ponytail gets out of his pickup and orders a Pat’s steak. He left Louisville at 2 a.m. so this is lunch.

8:20 a.m. A group of retired guys from the neighborhood are hanging out at one of Pat’s newly scrubbed tables, gabbing and drinking coffee, like they do every day. (Yes, Pat’s has coffee.) Joe Scimeca says they will clear out before the tourists hit at 11. Over at Geno’s, ad man Theo Gerike is finishing up a steak as he waits for the stars of an online Alka-Seltzer video to show. Alka-Selzer and cheesesteaks do not seem like a good pairing for the cheesesteaks. But Gerike supposedly has permission.

9:30 a.m. A couple from Buffalo in for a wedding are chowing down at Pat’s. The Alka-Seltzer actors have arrived at Geno’s and are being prepped for a local TV interview.

9:40 a.m. The Buffalo couple are now ordering two steaks at Geno’s.

11:45 a.m. Rock music is blaring from a WYSP radio tent set up right beside a “No Loud Radios $300 Fine” sign. Both Pat’s and Geno’s have short lines. A WYSP woman is walking around handing out free packets of Alka-Seltzer. People don’t take the hint and the lines grow longer.

12:30 p.m. The Alka-Seltzer woman tells people at Pat’s that they will get their steaks free if they say they were sent by the online video stars Rhett and Link. She also tells people that these guys will be showing up at 2:30 p.m., until someone from the production team points out Rhett a couple of feet away.

Pat’s customers include a large Asian family, here for a wedding, and two work buddies on assignment from Houston who complain about having to park 15 blocks away.

1 p.m.: Tables are full at both places. Among the customers at Geno’s is an elderly New Jersey couple who stopped by after a Center City doctor’s appointment (not a cardiologist).

3:45 p.m. Business is down to a steady trickle at both stands, although Rhett and Link are still interviewing people for their video. (And people think movie-making is glamorous.) A police van that appears to have been pulled over in haste – signaling a fight? Drug deal? Shooting? like the ones former Pat’s employee Juan Linares says he has seen -- turns out to just an Annie Hall parking job by two cops on dinner break.

4:35 p.m. A huge bus pulls up beside Geno’s and 45 middle-school kids from Washington, D.C., tumble out. Suddenly there's a 31-person line at Geno’s and none at all at Pat’s. And the Geno’s line continues to grow. It’s the lemming phenomenon. Or as one tourist in the Geno’s line explains, “You figure if all these people are here, it must be better.”

7:20 p.m. Now it's Pat's line that’s longer – 23 people to Geno’s seven. At the south side of Pat’s, a group of young mothers who are finished with dinner chat in a foreign language while their kids play with handheld video games. At Geno’s a man from London complains that the hot peppers have his “mouth on fire.” A steady stream of motorcycles, strollers, wheelchairs, pedestrians and cars with bad mufflers pass by.

10:50 p.m. A group of motorcyclists is parked in front of Geno’s. The families have fled; it’s mainly twentysomethings, including two who are using their car trunk as chair and table.

11:35 p.m. Fireworks go off at the stadium in the distance, adding to the carnival atmosphere. The Phillies have won in overtime and within 15 minutes, Phillies fans are 15 deep at both stands. A teenager wearing a long white T shirt and carrying a plastic bag walks around meekly asking for change and a few people oblige.

3:15 a.m. The lines are 37 deep at both stands or the longest of the day. Every bar in Greater Philadelphia has spewed forth its contents, who are now occupying every table and standup counter at both stands. In search of Philadelphia’s youth? This is when and where.

To Get There: From I-95 North, take Exit 23 (Girard/Lehigh). Merge onto Delaware Avenue and bear left onto Aramingo. In a little less than a mile, turn left onto Lehigh. Drive another three-quarters of a mile to Kensington Avenue and turn left. One Pound will be on your left. From I-95 South, take Exit 25 (Allegheny/Castor). Turn right onto Allegheny Avenue, then take the first left onto Richmond and drive half a mile. Turn right on Somerset. In one mile, turn left on Kensington. One Pound will be about two-tenths of a mile up. By public transportation from Center City, take the Market-Frankford Elevated subway line to Huntington Station, then walk half a block Northeast on Kensington Avenue to the intersection with Lehigh.

Seating: All outdoors. Includes two park benches and three benches in front of a ledge along the side of the building

Off-Street Parking: No

Alcohol: No

Hours: Noon to 4 a.m. Monday to Thursday; noon to 6 a.m. Friday and Saturday; 4 p.m. to 4 a.m. Sunday

Roll: D'Ambrosio's

Meat: Beef tip (aka knuckle) roast, sliced in-house and par-cooked ahead of time and held in a pan on the grill at busy times

Onion: Chopped and pre-cooked; scantily applied.

Cheese: Land O Lakes American, Lucky Leaf Cheddar Cheese Sauce, provolone or mozzarella folded into the meat on the grill in such a way that it can be hard to see (and also sometimes to taste)

Grill Seasoning: Melted butter

Specialties: Half-pound hamburgers for $4, chicken cheesesteaks made with cut-up chunks of chicken breast meat, the 1 Pound Cheesesteak, and the 1 Pound Cheesesteak with Double Meat for $14.50.

 

2661 Kensington Ave., Kensington, Philadelphia, 215-425-2996

Larry's Steaks' 1-and-a-quarter pound, 3-foot "Belly Filler" has been the subject of many a St. Joe's University frat-boy challenge. But 1 Pound Cheesesteak stand owner Jimmy Resuli says he's never seen or heard of anyone eating his eponymous steaks for sport. That could be because of his shop's location on a busy Lehigh Avenue truck route, in a downscale Kensington neighborhood. For the truckers, a pound of meat is just about the right size; financial struggling neighborhood families ask him to cut the 24-inchers in six, and feed the entire family for half of what it would cost at McDonald's.

But Resuli's 16-ounce best-seller is more than just a good value: It's also good food. He uses crusty-out, soft-in D'Ambrosio rolls; Lucky Leaf Cheddar Cheese Sauce (which he thinks is superior to the Whiz) and Land O Lakes American cheese, which he pulls from a sparkling stainless-steel refrigerator case.

At $10 per 1-pound sandwich you might expect Resuli to be putting that cheese on cheap, emulsified processed steak meat. But he actually cuts his own beef tip meat on an antique but gleaming slicing machine in one of the cleanest and most spacious cheesesteak kitchen spaces I've ever seen.

Although big enough for indoor seating, 1 Pound Cheesesteak has none. It's an outdoor stand with an ordering window – like Pat's and Geno's. One Pound is also like Pat's and Geno's in being busiest during the wee hours, but 1 Pound does not share the Cheesesteak Mecca's intimidating lines. Instead, 1 Pound has a "Call Your Number" system: People place their orders, pay and wait while sitting on park benches, or standing and watching the flat-screen TV Resuli installed for his customer's entertainment. Both the TV and the park benches might seem out of place on this busy four-lane cut-through that is Lehigh Avenue, but they're just a few of the ways Resuli has tried to brighten up 1 Pound since buying it from his former boss, the originator of the 1-pound gimmick.

Resuli has also decorated the building's primary-school orange and blue exterior with customer pictures – in answer to the celebrity ones at Pat's -- and posted ordering instructions in both Spanish and English – not actually an answer to the Geno's xenophobic one. Renuli claims ignorance of that controversy. It's more a function of 1 Pound's multicultural neighborhood and Renuli's own story. He came to the States from Albania in 2000, the result of an immigration lottery he won after 10 years and four tries. This stand was once named Lucky, and Renuli says that's how he feels about living in the U.S. and owning his own business.

Besides its steaks' size, 1 Pound is unique in having its grill greased with butter instead of oil. This lends their finely chopped beef a distinctive taste and richness – although they are not at all greasy. Dryness is more the problem with unmarinated beef tip meat (which could be why most 1 Pound customers order their steaks with mayo and ketchup), as it is with the finely chopped top round at Jim's, that tourist and school-kid magnet on South Street.

Frat boys on limited budgets looking for a place to train for one of Jim's cheesesteak-eating contests, this could be the place.