Hey. You want a cheesesteak review? Here.
So, today I was going to go to this art-fair / hotdog thing and buy a couple dogs. Why not? Neighborhood function, cheap, blah blah blah. But I biked up to the event, held in an apartment building basement, and took one look at the folks there - young, very young, looked like MCAD students that had healthy sex lives, dressed like they could talk to you for hours about Die Antwoord and Wolfgang Odd Future Kill Them All. So I said nuts to that and figured I would go to the Wienery, get a couple of Cleveland dogs and that’d be that. Except the Wienery closes at three on Sunday. So does Band Box Diner. So I said alright, let’s see what the cheesesteaks are at this Frank from Philly that Keith has never been to but has been raving about. (Still not sure how that works, Keith.)
OK, so here’s the first problem: Frank from Philly is in Dinkytown and you couldn’t pay me to live, work, or play in Dinkytown. The way Olive Garden is authentic Italian made by your great grandmother, Dinkytown is 1970s Times Square, and the way shop owners in Bowling Green’s “Four Corners” district have to hose the vomit off their sidewalks every Saturday and Sunday morning is a task I imagine Dinkytown businesses have to undertake every day from seven in the evening until seven in the morning JUST TO KEEP UP. Dinkytown is populated by college freshman, hungry for constant stimuli, usually meaning whichever curly-q’d-moustache-and-suspenders version of Mumford & Co is being rammed down their millenial earholes this month that’s playing at the Varsity Theater brought to you by Summit Brewing Company and 89.3 The Current, Great Music Lives Here. And for every reward I was granted in the form of an inch of eighteen and nineteen year old ass hanging out of Daisy Dukes, I was severely punished by the sight of two dozen tie-dye-and-high-top goons with burlap sack colored baseball caps and pinch-an-inch-ish chin hairs that were probably named Josh and could sell me a hit of weak acid. I would’ve taken the art school damaged kids in Whittier any day over these freaks, who looked like the kind of kids who’d never fucked WITHOUT the condom and were constantly poised for their next Instagram selfie, this generation’s version of the Clearisil commercial.
As previously mentioned, Frank from Philly is nestled in the middle of this shit, in a building with all the exterior design sensibilities of an LA Fitness and the interior design aesthetics of a repossessed Jimmy John’s.
Basically, I felt like I was walking into a dentist’s office in a city full of people whose women would never, ever fuck me.
I’m in line behind two typical Dinkytown goons I’ll call Thad and Braden (not Todd and Brandon, mind you; fucking suburban parents) and neither Thad or Braden can seem to make up their mind over what they want on their sandwiches, which is OK because the - oh, shit - stereotypical Asian tourist family at the register can’t decide how they’re going to pay. So it’s not like the line is moving.
Me? I know what I want: A cheesesteak. No, don’t fancy it up. I want the basics. I want the foundation. After all, you have to know how something tastes on its own before you decide to start throwing extra shit on it. (Which is why I always got the Italian Philly Cheesesteak from Caffrey’s, a cheesesteak with pepperoni and marinara added, because the regular one tastes like communion wafers on Wonder Bread.) (And no blood of Christ to wash it down.) They had the option for a Cheesesteak Supreme for a dollar extra which added peppers, mushrooms, and jalapeños or, as I like to call them, basics. But OK, basic at Frank from Philly’s is meat, onion, and my choice of cheese, and I went with cheez whiz, like you’re fucking supposed to.
After the Asian family carts their pizzas by the slices off to a table, Thad and Braden place their orders that sound more like fucking pizzas than the cheesesteak menus they were looking at and I’m beginning to think I don’t like them very much because these two Cillian Murphy looking butt-fingers look like the kind clueless dipshits that call Sbarro authentic. I couldn’t make out what they were saying exactly but it may as well have been a pineapple pizza chicken Philly with sauerkraut and generous dollops of mayo and ranch and of course Sri Racha like a couple of basic bitches - I sincerely hoped they twisted their ankles in a sewer grate on their way to whatever concert passes for Michelle Branch any more.
I get up to the register, the cashier asks me to give him a moment. I say sure, I’m in no hurry. That minute grew uncomfortably long, though, and I had to remind myself to just enjoy the air conditioning, for this is summer’s death rattle, and I’m pretty sure it’s six hundred forty degrees CELSIUS (worse than fucking Fahrenheit, I tell you) in the shade of a goddamned refigerator factory outside.
Eventually the guy takes my order. I want a cheesesteak. What kind of cheese would I like? Cheez whiz. They’ll have that right up for me.
Now, the sandwich is made to order so it’s going to take a minute. Or five. Asian family finishes their pizza slices, Dad comes up to grab a few more slices.
Five minutes turns into ten. Guy comes in and orders a pair of slices. And there goes Thad and Braden’s order. A family of real Eden Prairie pricks comes in and stares at the menu. Asian dad tries squeezing by to get to the pop machine. I scooch over and look back at the grill; three more cheesesteaks go on. Eden Prairie family leaves without ordering anything.
Ten minutes turns to fifteen. Guy with two slices, who was literally the last person to order, right after me, throws his plate away and leaves. Three cheesesteaks leave the grill. Do they have a delivery guy I haven’t seen? I ordered right after Thad and Braden, ten minutes before Mr. Two Slice and there was nobody between me and him aside from Asian dad coming back for seconds, my sandwich was as simple as they get. It stands to reason that I actually had a shot at getting my sandwich before Thad and Braden because of the simplicity. I start looking at Facebook.
Fifteen minutes turns into twenty, I’m actually contemplating asking for my nine dollars back because, at this point, I’ve spent more time waiting on the sandwich than I will eating it and that’s with a string of two - Asian dad and two slice guy - customers behind me who just ordered pizza slices. You know, slices. Of pizza. Already made. Really. How long is the wait on this fucking cheesesteak? And now the cashier asks me, “What kind of cheese did you want? Cheez whiz, right?”
Yeah, cheez whiz.
“We’ll have that right up for you, OK?”
Cool, thanks!
“Sorry about the wait.”
No problem.
But it is a problem because I’m in Dinkytown. Putting me in Dinkytown is like dropping an unarmed ISIL member in the middle of a Gay Pride Pork Roast: I’m filled with an anxious, nervous hatred stemming from a core of beliefs contrary to my surroundings; I’m lost, adrift in a sea of Connors and Bethanies and music I don’t understand and pussy I’ll never get and I just want to get back to my neighborhood where people work for a living and fuck without condoms and smoke grass when they listen to Sabbath LIKE NORMAL PEOPLE and -
“What kind of cheese did he want?” the grill cook asks the cashier even though I’m standing RIGHT THE FUCK HERE.
Cashier asks me, “Hey, man, what kind of cheese did you want again? It was cheez whiz, right?”
Cheez whiz, yeah.
“Cheez whiz,” the cashier tells the grill cook.
“Cheez whiz?” the grill cook asks.
“Yeah,” the cashier says.
I stare out the window and I wonder if I will ever get home. I am a lost argonaut in the labrynth of the Minotaur and fuck you if you’re about to tell me I’m mixing my mythology there, it’s been a while since I read anything published before the nineteenth century so keep in mind that if you say one fucking thing at this point, I’ll make you kiss my dick and smile, goddamn.
“He wanted cheez whiz, right?” the grill cook asks.
Before the cashier can ask me again, I turn and say, Cheez whiz, yeah.
Grill cook hands me my sandwich and says, “Sorry about the wait, man.”
Hey, no problem, thanks.
I find myself a place to sit and try to keep my mind away from the Proactiv Solution commercial that is Dinkytown During Daylight and finally eat my sandwich.
It was big. It was nine dollars big. It was served open-faced and I’d witnessed a family of witless wonders eat their fancy salads disguised as cheesesteaks with forks and knives while I waited for my own. I however found no problem closing my sandwich and eating it like a sandwich. It was good. The meat portion was generous and the onions were soft but with the right amount of snap and sweet the way sautéed onions are supposed to be. I could have used more cheezwhiz, honestly. And the bread was great. Even as the sandwich drained grease out on to the wax paper on my plate, the bread did not get soggy. It was chewy without being rubbery or spongy and it made the perfect vessel for sopping up the grease on the wrapper, which I will probably pay for later.
Was it worth the nine bucks? Yes, absolutely.
Was it worth a half hour bike ride, one way, into the armpit of Tweeville? No. No. No no no. For Christ’s sake, even Lyn-Lake, with its Pabst swilling tattoo-sleeved nineties slacker-chic hipsters posing as cheesecake pinups and quiff-bois from your nose to the horizon has more dignity than fucking Dinkytown.
Was it worth a twenty minute wait on an otherwise dead Sunday afternoon? No but maybe they had deliveries. I really did maintain my cool and thank them and tip them and not bug them and they were really nice even though I have no idea why the grill cook needed two reminders that I’d ordered mine with cheez whiz. Still, though.
Verdict? I’ll go again if they ever open a location in northeast, downtown, midtown, uptown, West Bank or south because fuck me if I ever find myself in Dinkytown again.
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