Homemade Cheez Whiz and hoagie rolls: How a Philly-themed bar in Tokyo recreated a picture-perfect cheesesteak 6,700 miles away

TOKYO — There’s a little bar in Tokyo where a Philadelphian would feel right at home. It’s a 12-seat tavern plastered with familiar mementos: a SEPTA Regional Rail map, a Phillies pennant, Dallas Sucks beer koozies, and stuffed animal representations of four Philadelphia team mascots. There’s Eagles-branded whiskey and vodka on the menu, and Sixers and Phillies games on the TV. From the compact kitchen just behind the bar, you can hear the rapid-fire tap of metal on metal — the sound of a cook breaking up sizzling short rib on the flattop grill.

Where else could this be but Nihonbashi Philly? It’s not the only place in this sprawling metropolis to serve up cheesesteaks — not surprising for a city six times more populous than Philadelphia — but its rendition is executed as faithfully as possible.

I know because I soaked it up firsthand recently while on a Wagyu-themed trip to Japan. And I brought two authoritative travel companions with me: South Philly-born pizza and bread consultant Gregorio Fierro and Royal Tavern chef Nic Macri.

We came to size up the cheesesteaks, like a lot of Philadelphians who have passed through Tokyo recently. But we left with more than full bellies. We learned the story of husband-and-wife owners Kosuke and Tomomi Chujo, who spent years admiring the City of Brotherly Love from afar, transfixed by its culture and history. More and more, they’ve channeled this obsession into continuously improving their version of Philly’s token sandwich.

That’s no easy feat from 6,700 miles away. The Chujos can’t buy Cheez Whiz, for instance, so they make their own, mixing flour and butter into a roux, then adding in milk and a blend of grated cheddar, Monterey Jack, and asadero. Likewise, Tomomi couldn’t persuade any of Tokyo’s bakeries to recreate a hoagie roll, so she bakes them from scratch. And they buy American beef because “Japanese beef is too greasy for American cheesesteak,” Tomomi said. Even the onions are thoughtfully procured, grown in a small backyard garden near Mount Fuji by Tomomi’s father.

But Nihonbashi Philly’s cheesesteak didn’t start out this way.

Kosuke Chujo first learned about the cheesesteak as a teenager in the 1980s, after falling in love with Philly soul music. He began reading up on the city itself, and he found parallels between Philadelphia and his native Nihonbashi, one of Tokyo’s earliest commercial centers. It was the start of a lifelong affinity. In 2011, when he decided to open an Italian restaurant, he chose Philly as its name. (It pivoted to its current sports bar concept in 2019.)

Tomomi adopted the same affection for Kosuke’s soulmate city not long after the two met in 2012. Neither had stepped foot in Philadelphia when they first attempted to make a cheesesteak, so they did what anyone does to recreate a cherished dish without knowing how: pored over videos, photos, and recipes, then reverse-engineered it to the best of their abilities. Their first stab used a baguette, cheddar cheese, and beef seasoned with teriyaki sauce.

The Chujos fed their creation to a friend who had studied at Penn. He broke the news: It looked like a cheesesteak, but it was not a cheesesteak. They decided to offer it anyway and put their “cheesesteak” on Nihonbashi Philly’s menu in 2013. By 2017, however, its inauthenticity had become too much to bear and they pulled it. “It’s very embarrassing to see it now,” Tomomi said.

For years, they continued studying, but secondhand research can only get you so far. “We never had a cheesesteak, so we cannot make original one,” Tomomi said.

It wasn’t until October 2021 that the Chujos finally made it to Philly to try the real thing. “On the first night, we ate cheesesteak and realized, ‘Oh, it’s completely different.’”

It took a pandemic to bring the Chujos to Philly. In March 2020, their business and the rest of Tokyo ground to a halt, and it more or less stayed that way for two years. They remained open, but the neighborhood’s commuter customer base had mostly dried up. The couple watched neighboring restaurants start to shutter. “Every day was dark news and we couldn’t see the future at all,” Tomomi said.

That darkness led them to a surprising conclusion: “Do what we want!” Tomomi said. “We don’t know what’s at the end of the challenge, but we were sure every day will be fun even if it’s hard.”

The Chujos plunged deeper into a cheesesteak rabbit hole. They watched countless YouTube videos and visited whatever Tokyo cheesesteak spots they could find. “We started talking about cheesesteak every day,” Tomomi said. If they were ever to offer a truly authentic version, they knew what needed to happen next.

The Chujos are not big travelers. They live above the bar and are its primary staffers, and Kosuke suffers from airsickness. They didn’t even take a honeymoon after they wed in 2013. But when the U.S. opened its borders to visitors in 2021, they booked flights to Philadelphia. They did so quietly: Traveling was deemed a health risk at the time, and they feared judgment from customers and neighbors. The airports on both sides of the journey were empty.

Once they hit the ground in Philly, they set about eating as many cheesesteaks as possible. They were flummoxed by SEPTA but racked up a fair number of spots on foot between Reading Terminal Market, Old City, and South Philly, sampling steaks at By George, Cleaver’s, Carmen’s, Campo’s, Ishkabibble’s, Sonny’s, Jim’s, Pat’s, Geno’s, and Tony Luke’s.

“We realized that both bread and cheese were completely different from what we had imagined,” Tomomi said.

Back in Tokyo, the Chujos got to work. They brought rolls home from Reading Terminal and shopped them around to French and Italian bakeries, but no one would bite. “The baking process is completely different. … They said it’s too hard to make it. So we decided to make our own,” said Tomomi, who had never made bread. (YouTube to the rescue.) She also began tinkering with a homemade cheese sauce based on a jar of Kraft Cheez Whiz that a friend brought back to Japan from the U.S.

In 2022, they started posting pictures of Nihonbashi Philly’s prototype cheesesteak — made with sautéed beef, onions, and mushrooms — to their Instagram account. The sandwich soon landed on the menu, joining other offerings like pasta, fish and chips, and barbecue wings and ribs.

Within a year, the cheesesteak went viral. Philly native and Japanese sports journalist Dan Orlowitz tweeted about it, prompting an Inquirer story. “The world changed completely,” Tomomi said.

The story sent a deluge of Philadelphians their way, relishing a taste of home halfway across the world. Tomomi asked each one where they should eat the next time they were stateside. The Chujos started worrying their cheesesteak wasn’t up to snuff, so they planned a research trip for early 2024.

When they returned in January, they had a wide-ranging list of Philly cheesesteak standouts to investigate from Roxborough to the Northeast, all the way down to Snyder Avenue. This time, they had friends — former customers — to help them navigate the city. They greeted the Chujos with gifts, including T-shirts and Lost Bread pretzel shortbread.

“Philadelphians are really heartful,” Tomomi said.

The Chujos made it to Angelo’s (Kosuke’s favorite), John’s Roast Pork, Wawa, Del Rossi’s, Joe’s Steaks, Woodrow’s, Dalessandro’s, Chickie’s and Pete’s, Bar Jawn, Cafe Carmela (Tomomi’s favorite), and several more. They took detailed notes about each sandwich and its ingredients, down to weight, length, and thickness.

Returning home, the Chujos remodeled their cheesesteak. While Jim’s had been their 2021 inspiration, they’re now channeling Angelo’s, with its masterfully baked roll and ultra-cheesy thinly sliced beef. (The mushrooms remain, though.)

Customers have continued to pour through the door. While many are from the U.S., they’re coming from elsewhere, too. “Now people from Australia, Singapore, Indonesia, Korea, Europe, and many other countries come to eat cheesesteak,” Tomomi said. ”That’s means that we have to tell the whole world about Philadelphia from Tokyo through cheesesteak.”

The Chujos opened the bar on their day off to accommodate us out-of-towners. (Incidentally, another Philadelphian — Germantown’s Wayne Marshall, a Temple grad and center for the Shinshu Brave Warriors basketball team — also had arranged to visit that afternoon.) Macri, Fierro, and Marshall talked about Japan and Philly while the Chujos welcomed me into the kitchen.

Kosuke assembled our sandwiches, searing thin cuts of short rib, then chopping them up with a spatula till frizzled. As the meat cooked, he split hoagie rolls down the center and slicked them with cheese sauce. He then folded fried onions into the beef, layered on slices of provolone from Costco, and covered the whole thing up with a lid to let the cheese melt. It was all briefly blended together before Kosuke scooped whopping servings (200 grams — they measured) into each roll, which he sliced in half before ladling cheese sauce over the top.

So how did the cheesesteak fly with two South Philly chefs?

Well, naturally, they quietly picked it apart (and ordered it without mushrooms). But they were impressed given the difficulties of sourcing traditional cheesesteak ingredients. “This is like making a cheesesteak on a camping trip,” Fierro said.

They thought the cheese sauce had depth of flavor but that the texture could be richer, while the bread had beautiful shaping but needed more protein for better chew. The meat, American short rib, was excellent — superior, in fact, to what most American cheesesteak shops use.

The criticisms were deftly delivered — “I think it’s really good and it can be better,” Fierro said — and graciously accepted. Fierro promised he’d take the Chujos to bake bread at Angelo’s on their next visit to Philly and passed along a hoagie roll recipe, while Macri sent them a sodium citrate-based cheese sauce recipe to eliminate the roux.

Ever refining, as they aspire to one day achieve an Angelo’s-level cheesesteak, Tomomi reported back with results within a day or two. ”It turned out to be a wonderful bread!” she said. “It looks like a Sarcone’s Bakery!”

Recently, the Chujos had another shot on goal when Liberty Kitchen chef Matt Budenstein swung through Tokyo to collaborate with them on a pop-up featuring roast pork sandwiches, another Philly staple that will soon hit the bar’s menu.

“The cheesesteak was honestly as good or better than you get in a lot of places in Philly,” Budenstein said.