#71 and 72 the Philly Taco - Sam's synopsis

Ah gluttony. One of the better sins in my opinion, and if you're stuck in Dante's Inferno lying around in icy smelly slush, well, that's a lot better than being submerged in a river of boiling blood and fire or being turned into a thorny bush and feasted upon by Harpies or being buried in a giant pile of poop. But back to gluttony, what better time than the holidays - when Thanksgiving leftovers are still rotting in your fridge as you attend holiday party after holiday party with even more food - to post our review for the Philly Taco?

the ingredients... pretty intense on
their own

For those of you unaware, the Philly Taco is a legend of sorts. For all my Rochester friends, it's the garbage plate of Philadelphia (spoiler alert: the garbage plate is better. But we already knew that). You take a cheesesteak from Jim's (better than Pat's or Geno's IMO) and wrap it in a slice of pizza from Lorenzo's. There's some nice information on it here, with a link to the original article describing the challenge. Again, for you non-Philly folks, this area of South Street is a pretty prime spot for late-night post-drinking food indulgence. A single slice of cheese pizza from Lorenzo's is larger than the size of my head. And I don't think I need to to explain the significance of cheesesteaks. But in any case, people love weird food challenges, so this has become a thing. It's even inspired a beer which we sadly did not drink. So of course we had to do it.

The first obvious condition of this challenge is that you must not be sober. Unless you regularly eat like this, do not be sober. Do not get drunk on beer unless you have an enormous appetite and a lot of room in your stomach. Get drunk real fast on straight up liquor and then go for it, because this is not for the light-hearted. The second condition is you should probably do it with friends. You'll need the motivation. 

With this in mind, we planned for a Friday evening so as not to ruin our whole weekend and we decided to start drinking on the earlier side so we could be functional the next morning. Man, we are boring adults these days. And to be honest, I think for the truly authentic experience, the Philly Taco needs to be done more on a whim. Sure, you can plan to go out that night and do it, but don't let it be at the forefront of your mind. Just let the night of drinking happen and see where it takes you. You probably shouldn't do it before midnight anyways, but like I said, we're a snoozefest these days so what can you do. 

I proceeded to drink two gin and tonics and get a nice buzz going. There were 5 of us enjoying the evening, with 4 attempting the challenge. So we divided and conquered, and since it was only about 9:30 pm both teams acquired the goods and returned back to the apartment within 10 minutes. Now, I stopped eating red meat a long time ago (I never really liked the taste and I am cursed by my genetics with high cholesterol despite leading a relatively healthy lifestyle, all things considered) but this was a time where I felt like it was my duty to the blog to get an actual cheesesteak. Whiz wit of course. It just wouldn't be a proper Philly Taco otherwise.

Fig. A

Onto the art of wrapping the cheesesteak in the pizza slice. There's some argument about the best way to do this (see the first link above), but it made the most sense to me to tuck the end of the pizza slice into the cheesesteak and then roll it up (imagine the cheesesteak rolled inside a crescent role, see Fig. A). Once this was done, it was time to get cracking.

The overall experience was... better than I was expecting. Despite not being a big fan of cheesesteaks, having it wrapped in a giant slice of pizza made it taste better. Any bite that contained a combination of whiz and cheese from the pizza was heaven. Any bite that was mostly cheesesteak was meh. I think most people agreed that the proper pizza to cheesesteak ratio was needed for full enjoyment. I also think that if I were a little drunker I would have been able to eat the whole thing, but I only made it about 3/5 of the way before saying fuck it - although one of our brave companions ate the entire thing! Great job Josh  (if you can celebrate an accomplishment like that)! I can definitely appreciate why people like it as drunk food, but I'd rather stick to a slice of Lorenzo's alone.

the aftermath

So this has turned into a very long blog post, but I think a local legend deserves it. I would still pick an iteration of the garbage plate over the Philly Taco any day, but I understand why people like it. If I had been a little drunker, I think I could have fully appreciated the concoction and maybe even finished it. But that will have to wait for another time in my life, which may (hopefully) never actually come. For now though, I'll stick to the slightly more traditional methods of gluttony, which involve eating a lot of free food at the department holiday parties while I still can.

Jim's Steaks
400 South Street
Philadelphia, PA
(215) 928-1911

Lorenzo and Sons
305 South Street
Philadelphia, PA
(215) 800-1942