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-76 E, take I-676 E toward Central Philadelphia. Take the first (Broad Street) exit. Follow signs for Broad, bearing left around City Hall. Rick’s is located two blocks south of City Hall in the basement of the building at the corner of Broad and Walnut. By public transportation, take the Broad Street subway line to Walnut-Locust. Exit at Walnut and Broad. The Bellevue is located on that corner and Rick’s is in that building’s basement level food court.

Meat: Chuck eye sliced at the stand and cooked to order in slabs

Cheese: Whiz, American, provolone or mozzarella, placed on the bread and topped with the meat

Rolls: Liscio’s

Onions: Chopped, precooked and placed on the roll with the meat

Seasoning: Water only

Specialties: Veggie steaks made with Vegadelphia’s Veggie Lean

 

Shops at the Bellevue, 200 S. Broad St., Center City, Philadelphia, RicksSteaks.com

The only thing Philadelphians love more than the Reading Terminal Market is cheesesteaks. So when Market management announced they would not be renewing Rick’s Steak stand’s lease there in 2007, the usual hue and cry that arises anytime a Market merchant is asked to leave was compounded in this case by Rick Olivieri’s royal cheesesteak pedigree as the grandson of cheesesteak inventor Pat Olivieri. For almost two years the local media chronicled the Rick lease story, including fellow merchants’ protest cancellation of the annual Amish Festival, a petition drive that yielded more than 3,000 signatures and the legal battle that resulted in Rick agreeing to leave by fall 2008.

But the great storm is over. Since mid-May Philadelphians have been able to get a Rick’s cheesesteak wit’out rancor just three blocks away from his old Market home in the basement food court of the elegant Park Hyatt at the Bellevue hotel.

When Pat Olivieri retired to California in the mid-1960s, his brother, Harry, got the famous Ninth Street stand where it all began and Pat’s son, Herb, got Pat’s Dauphin Street restaurants and the right to open stands under the Pat’s name everywhere but within 3.5 miles of Ninth Street. That’s why the stand he opened in the Reading Terminal Market in 1982 was called Olivieri Prince of Steaks. Rick worked his dad’s shops from age 14.

“It was not even like a job to me. I loved it – talking to customers, making them happy,” Rick recalled in a mid-2008 in an interview interrupted several times to chat or exchange hugs with customers at his shop. That might make Rick seem like primarily a people person but he also has a keen interest and head for business that his dad lacked, judging from Herb’s struggles with his cheesesteak businesses. (See page 103 of “The Great Philly Cheesesteak Book” for more on Herb’s steak experiences.) But Rick says lack of time and concentration was really his dad’s problem.

“He was deputy attorney general at the time – and this is not a turnkey business. If somebody puts just a slice or two of extra meat, you can be giving away a couple of 100 sandwiches in one day.” In any case, Rick took over his dad’s old Olivieri’s Reading Terminal Market spot in 1995, renaming it Rick’s Steaks.

Reading Terminal Market was in disrepair when the Olivieris first got there. But by the time Rick’s opened a refurbished market was part of Philadelphia’s sparkling new convention center and the downtown office workers and regional rail commuters who had always patronized Olivieri’s were supplemented by convention-goers in search of their first cheesesteak. Rick became head of the market’s union-like Merchants Association about the same time as market management was introducing new leases, which Olivieri helped his fellow shopkeepers fight. So when Rick’s own lease came up, management didn’t even offer to renew his lease, assuming he would not want to accept the terms for himself.

That’s why you now have to go to the Bellevue to get Rick’s sandwich, which is slab-style like Pat’s. Like his cousin and uncle who run Pat’s, Rick likes Cheez Whiz -- although as at Pat’s, other cheeses are available. The main differences are the more expensive and, Rick believes, more flavorful chuck eye meat he uses and cooks on the grill with water instead of the oil that give cheesesteaks their infamous grease rep.

We’re not saying this makes Rick’s cheesesteaks healthy – that’s probably not possible to say about any cheesesteak – but it undoubtedly lightens the workload of the janitors who clean the tables and floors of the Bellevue food court.