The oxtail cheesesteak is so much more than just another viral sandwich

Hannah Ahzai planned to sell fancy burgers when she opened Ummi Dee’s Burger Bistro in 2018. But the devoted customers of her Strawberry Mansion sandwich shop had other ideas. What they really wanted were cheesesteaks. Not the classic variety with thinly sliced, frizzled beef, but salmon steaks — brimming with flaky chunks of fresh salmon, spinach, and creamy flows of cheesy Mornay. That’s why her restaurant is now known simply as Ummi Dee’s.

“We just couldn’t run from it,” Ahzai says of the shift from burgers to cheesesteaks. More recently, there’s another star sizzling on Ummi Dee’s griddle: a heaping mound of boneless oxtails, slow braised and laced with onions and peppers, then tucked into a soft Amoroso’s roll draped with molten Cooper Sharp cheese and a gush of oxtail gravy that’s scented with allspice and Scotch bonnet heat.

Oxtail, which is essentially the tail of beef cattle, has long been an anchor on platters in soul food and Caribbean restaurants, not to mention soup bowls in Vietnamese pho halls — albeit almost always with the nuggets of meat usually still clinging to the star-shaped bones. Such is the case at Kingston 11 in Southwest Philly, where Abbygale Bloomfield’s stellar Jamaican rendition arrives in deep brown gravy that radiates tamarind, thyme, fresh ginger, and allspice.

The oxtail’s appearance as a boneless stuffing inside a cheesesteak is a relatively new phenomenon, with versions at Ummi Dee’s, Kingston 11, its new sibling restaurant, Jerk Fry City, and elsewhere appearing over the last year. “Everyone can relate to a cheesesteak, I believe,” says Bloomfield of Kingston 11 and Jerk Fry City.

The salmon cheesesteak that was the first big draw to Ummi Dee’s emerged as a trend primarily out of the city’s Black-owned halal kitchens over the past decade, according to Ahzai, whose restaurant is also halal. Now a well-known genre on Philly’s sandwich circuit with a growing fanbase — Bloomfield makes a salmon steak at Kingston 11, too, not surprisingly lit with jerk spice — it is a close cousin to the fish hoagie popularized at local restaurants like the now-closed Sister Muhammad’s in North Philly, Honeysuckle Provisions in West Philadelphia (the Friday special), and Gilben’s Bakery in East Mount Airy.

According to chef Kurt Evans, owner of the forthcoming Black Dragon Takeout — who was known for a salmon cheesesteak cooked in the rendered fat of salmon belly trim at his former restaurant, Route 23 Cafe — fish hoagies typically use fried fish, often whiting, while the fish for cheesesteaks is always cooked on the griddle. It’s “the process of the griddle that defines it as a steak,” he says.

Evans helped develop Ahzai’s version, which uses 8 ounces of salmon fillet. At $20 a sandwich (plus up to $8 for added shrimp), it speaks both to her audience’s willingness to pay for quality and the versatility of the cheesesteak as a continuously evolving expression of this city’s myriad communities.

“The salmon steak has had its day, but this is the oxtail’s moment,” Evans says.

“It’s neck and neck,” Ahzai says about which sandwich is currently most popular. “The oxtail is more for risk-takers, and some people have reservations.”

The city’s signature sandwich has always been an inspirational canvas for global flavors, from the Indian cheesesteak at Little Sicily Pizza II to the berbere-spiced Ethiopian cheesesteak at Gojjo, the bulgogi cheesesteak at Korea Taqueria, the birria cheesesteak at Chiquita’s Pizzeria, and the pastrami cheesesteak at the Famous 4th Street Deli.

The current rise of the oxtail as a cheesesteak idol coincides with a nationwide bump in love for oxtails in general, jumping 45% in mentions on Yelp between 2020 and 2021. The interest has sustained itself, according to search trends on Google. Locally, oxtail has appeared in everything from eggrolls at Food Chaser’s Kitchen in Elkins Park to stuffed cabbage beside the tasting menu strip steak at Friday Saturday Sunday, or scattered between the delicate layers of a lasagnetta at Vetri Cucina. Evans made crispy rangoon dumplings stuffed with oxtail and sweet potato for a James Beard Foundation Taste of America event in 2023, previewing a menu item for Black Dragon Takeout.

Adrian Miller, the James Beard-winning author of Soul Food (2013, University of North Carolina Press), says oxtails are just the latest off-cut of meat that’s been a staple for Black cooks and other international culinary traditions and has been rediscovered as a “shiny new object ... and starts expressing itself in all kinds of different ways.”

“But there’s such an unctuous quality about oxtails that sets it apart from other cuts,” he says, noting the depth of flavor that comes from its proximity to the bone, along with the extra fat and cartilage that, when patiently cooked, can melt into the meat and gravy with an almost glossy richness. “It’s just so dang good when you know what you’re doing with it.”

Ahzai got the idea for an oxtail cheesesteak last summer after seeing Evans’ former Philadelphia business partner, chef Allen Young, have success with it at his Major Phillie Cheesesteaks in Norfolk, Va. She debuted her rendition in August in coordination with an Instagram post from local food influencer J.L. Jupiter, and it went viral. “It blew up the next day and people were camping out in a line outside our door,” she said, estimating they began selling 200 oxtail cheesesteaks a day. “The oxtail cheesesteak has expanded our reach nationally as a brand and we experience tourism from all over now, with people coming from Miami, Buffalo, Virginia, Chicago, even California.”

The sales numbers are impressive, considering the $30 price tag — a reflection of the fact that oxtails are both increasingly expensive as an ingredient, since they are mostly bone, and are extremely labor intensive, taking several hours to cook. Most traditional beef cheesesteaks cost less than half that price. (Except for the truffled kobe steak for $140 at Barclay Prime.)

“Honestly it’s funny, the $30 price felt like a social experiment that brought different reactions,” Ahzai said. “Some people were enraged and upset, like ‘Who the heck do you think you are selling a cheesesteak for $30?’ Other people, who understand what goes into oxtails, were like, ‘Oh, is that all?’”

Bloomfield is charging a similar price — $35, including a side and drink — for the oxtail cheesesteak at Jerk Fry City, her new South Street restaurant, which also showcases her distinctively spiced jerk fried chicken.

Bloomfield has been perfecting her oxtail steak since at least last May, when she ran it as a weekly special; the preview I recently tasted at Kingston 11 was an eye-opening explosion of boldly steeped flavors and luscious, slow-braised softness. It was chunkier, weightier, and less cheesy than the version at Ummi Dee’s. It also benefitted from an extra drizzle of oxtail gravy and the subtle crunch of sweet bell peppers that accented the deeply stewed savor. There was also an additional ping of bright Scotch bonnet heat from an aioli made with the spicy tomato base typically used for Jollof rice, a collaboration with local Nigerian chef Shola Olunloyo that is partly a nod to the Nigerian owner of the Shade Room, the celeb gossip site that will be promoting Jerk Fry City’s opening. But it’s also a tribute to the many West African businesses and residents that neighbor Kingston 11 on Woodland Avenue, and have helped to fuel its success.

“We are just a big melting pot here,” says Bloomfield.

“It is literally melting on this sandwich!” joked Olunloyo, whose grip could barely contain the steaming hot cheesesteak and its combined flavors of Jamaica, West Africa, and Philly. And the city’s ever-evolving sandwich culture took one more delicious step forward.

📍Ummi Dee’s, 2805 N. 22nd St., Philadelphia, Pa. 19132, 📞215-221-6166, 🌐 ummidees.com, 📷 instagram.com/ummidees; 📍Jerk Fry City, 602 South St., 📷 instagram.com/jerkfrycity