What makes a great cheesesteak? It’s the roll, and this shop thinks it has a better one

Ribeye, cheese, bread. That’s the gist of a classic cheesesteak.

Griddle the beef in slabs, or chop it. Lay on the cheese — perhaps insist on Cooper Sharp American. Mix the beef and cheese with some sizzling onions. It all melds together.

The real differentiator in the cheesesteak game is the roll.

That’s what sent Nish Patel of Del Rossi’s in Northern Liberties to Cleveland for a rendezvous with a bread consultant from Canada. Now, Del Rossi’s is one of the few sandwich shops in the region baking its rolls from scratch — making its steak, by definition, one of the region’s new standouts.

Four years ago, when Patel took over, Del Rossi’s was another decent pizza and sandwich shop, having opened in 2012 on Fourth Street near Spring Garden. He was a Saladworks franchisee, with no experience in sandwiches or pizzas. Del Rossi’s rolls came from commercial bakeries — all shops have their allegiances, whether Sarcone’s, Carangi, Cacia’s, or Liscio’s — “and they were fine,” Patel said.

The sandwiches were not the priority then, anyway. Del Rossi’s also serves pizza, and Patel needed to dial in the dough. Even his mother complained about it. “She said, ‘The pizza is good, but why is it so floppy and soft?’” said Patel, 35, who lives in Burlington.

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Late last year, Patel arrived at a recipe that satisfied his mother. Pizza dough finally solved, Patel decided that he needed better bread for his cheesesteaks. He approached Danny DiGiampietro, a longtime roll baker, at Angelo’s Pizzeria in South Philadelphia, which is regarded among the region’s best at both sandwiches and pizzas.

DiGiampietro was quick to offer help with such geeky concepts as fermentation and hydration. “I really don’t have [anything] to hide,” he said. “He was green, but he was eager to learn and he’s hungry.”

Hungry or not, Patel said he quickly discovered that there is more of an art to bread than pizza dough. As DiGiampietro likes to say, “If there ain’t no pixie dust, anybody could do it.”

Patel next came to the realization that he needed his own bakery to produce the bread he had in mind: a hybrid of a sourdough baguette and the traditional Philly hoagie roll. He hadn’t been using most of the dining room since the pandemic, so he decided to build it in his storefront restaurant. Striking up a relationship with an equipment salesperson, he was invited to visit a test kitchen in Cleveland in February.

“We made some baguettes, and while we were happy with the dough, we were not happy with how they looked,” Patel said. “This put me down a new path of like, ‘OK, I need some professional help. I’m not a baker but I do know how to make a killer dough. If only someone could just show me how to shape and ferment everything properly.’”

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In his research, Patel came across an Instagram video made by a bread consultant. He reached out with his story: I have a sandwich shop in Philadelphia and I want to bake my own bread. I need help.

The consultant, who is from Western Canada, had never tried a cheesesteak. But flash forward two months, and Patel returned to the test kitchen with him in tow. After they selected the equipment, they adjusted flours, hydration, and proofing times to create a roll that fit Patel’s specifications: a seeded sourdough roll made with very little yeast (which is notoriously finicky) that is soft inside but crispy on the outside, and is held together by a “hinge” that can stand up to heavy, sopping ingredients.

In early July, Patel took delivery of the equipment, which now fills half of the dining room. Last week, the consultant — whose identity was withheld to prevent competitors from poaching his bread techniques — flew to Philadelphia, carrying a sourdough starter that was later mixed with a powdered starter from one of Patel’s friends who lives in San Francisco.

What Patel and his mystery consultant — who experienced his first cheesesteak just last week — have created is not just a distinct roll but a delicious steak. The best? Who am I to say? We all have different tastes. I enjoy sandwiches from the classics as well as some of the newer shops such as Verona in Maple Glen, Steaks West Chester in West Chester, and Gazzos in Pottstown. There’s quality outside of the market, too, from Fedoroff’s in Brooklyn, Olde City in Manhattan, and Nihonbashi Philly in Tokyo.

One of Del Rossi’s singular attributes is that the rolls are fresh from the oven. The loaves are crispy and sturdy, holding the ingredients bite after bite, a product of the consultant teaching Patel and his team how to properly score the loaves before they go into the oven — creating tiny nubs (“ears”) that provide a pleasant crunchiness.

The research that went into the roll’s “hinge” — tuning the oven to specific humidity and spacing the rolls — also yielded a sandwich that did not get soggy in its wrapper, even hours later.

Patel, who recently sold his last Saladworks store, declined to specify how much he has spent to create his roll, but it’s likely in the low- to mid-six figures.

Patel’s success might amount to more than just an improved cheesesteak in Northern Liberties. Gregorio Fierro, the South Philadelphia-based consultant who worked on Del Rossi’s pizza formula, said that new baking setups like Patel’s — which is semi-automated and scaled to a smaller restaurant, versus a bakery that turns out tens of thousands of rolls a day — could ultimately make it easier to syndicate great cheesesteaks far and wide.

“You still have to know how to work the stuff,” Fierro said. “But you don’t need to be a professional baker. If they’re making better bread, then conceivably they could make a much better cheesesteak, at the same level as you’re getting in Philly.”

Beef, cheese, and onions are not unique to Philadelphia, after all. “The implications of that are whether you’re in Dallas, Cincinnati, or Indianapolis, then the cheesesteak becomes more prolific,” said Fierro, who works all over the world. “If you want to do a four-location cheesesteak place in Iowa, you could. No more putting steak on a hot dog roll and trying to tell me it’s a cheesesteak.”