Philadelphia, PA. June 27-28 - The Philly Cheese Steak Challenge

We pulled into Philly around 4pm. As we were on the way to the hotel we missed an exit and ended up right in the ghetto and quickly u turned in the middle of the street to high tail it out of there! Once we made it back to the high way we were back en route for the hotel. Overall the hotel was nice, it was located by the air port just out side the city so parking was easy and room was very clean. Once we checked in we started to look where we could get the best cheese steak in philly. Then we remembered there was an Episode on Man vs Food where the host tries a cheese steak from Pats Cheese Steaks and Genos Cheese Steaks to see which is better since they are right across the street from each other. Both claim to have the best cheese steak in Philly and both are open 24/7. We knew we had to try both of them to see which one truly had the best cheese steak in philly. We decided we would have one for dinner that night and then try the other one for lunch the next day.

The first one we tried for  was Pats Famous Cheese Steaks. This one looked more original so we thought we would try it first. Here we had the true Philly experience. Right as we started to park it began raining so we had to run about .5 miles in the rain just to get to the place. Once we arrived we checked out the menu. There were two food windows both cash only. One where you could only get cheese steaks with either american, provolone, or cheese wiz and with or with out onions. Cheese wiz was the obvious choice to help complete the philly experience. To make the experience even better the employs talk super fast, are extremely rude, and rush everybody through the line as fast as possible. Just how it should be in Philly. The next window is where you can order your drink and fries if you'd like and that is all they served at this window and they too were rude and rushed you. After getting our food we sat down to indulge. This had to be one of the best cheese steaks we have ever tasted. The meat tasted very good and it all just blended together with the cheese wiz and the grilled onions. The bread was amazing and tied it all together perfectly. The french fries at Pats were extremely good too. They were very crispy and thick, but not too thick. After filling up on cheese steaks we ran back to the car through the rain and headed back to the hotel to call it a night.

The next day we woke up, packed up all of our stuff, checked out of the hotel and headed down to Geno's Cheesesteaks to see what they had too offer. Luckily this time it wasn't raining and we were able to park very close so the walk wasn't bad at all. Genos had two windows also, one for cheese steaks, and one for fries and drinks, both cash only. and the menu was the exact same as Pats Cheese Steaks. So again we got a cheese steak with cheese wiz and onions, fries and a drink. It was the moment of truth...which cheese steak would be better? After diving into the Genos cheese steak we both agreed Pats was better. Both were delicious but Pats was better. Geno's meat didn't taste as good as Pats and they used a different cheese wiz. Also Geno's was much greasier than Pats and their fries were not nearly as good as Pats. Geno had really thin fries that were still good, but we agreed that the thick fries were better.

Overall both cheese steaks were very delicous but we had to make  decision. Which one was better? Pats or Geno's? and the obvious choice was Pats Cheese Steaks. They say the owner invented the cheese steak and after trying both of them I guess it has to be true because Pats is better. After finishing our cheese steaks at Geno's we headed back to the car to hit the road for New Jersey. While walking back we accidentally walked past our car and began to panic when we couldn't find it. Worried that we may have picked a bad place to park and could have been towed, the panic really set it. Thankfully though we found our bearings, located the car and thankfully it was not towed. Then we hit the road for New Jersey.