Where to find good cheesesteaks in NYC — if you must

Many years ago, while I commuted daily from Philadelphia to work in New York City, a well-meaning colleague offered me a “cheesesteak sandwich” from his local bodega. I unwrapped a hot roast beef with Cheddar cheese on a kaiser roll.

The next day on my way in, I bought five cheesesteaks from Joseph’s Pizzeria in Northeast Philadelphia and reheated them in our newsroom toaster oven.

The hungry hordes gathered and dug in. Eyes rolled in ecstasy. Some weeks, I had to make two cheesesteak runs.

» READ MORE: Our favorite Philly cheesesteaks in the Philly area

Forty years later, the cheesesteak game has evolved, and respectable versions can be found in shops from Tacony to Tokyo.

A recent round of sampling in New York City yielded a half-dozen shops where they bake (or at least thoughtfully source) their rolls and use care on the grill. A seventh is on the way — a brick-and-mortar version of the Danny & Coop’s food truck, pairing Danny DiGiampietro of Angelo’s Pizzeria with actor Bradley Cooper.

In 2015, South Philly native Dave Fedoroff was living in Brooklyn, bored with his job at Trader Joe’s, when he got the itch to sell the roast pork of his childhood at Smorgasburg, the open-air market. A year later, he and his wife, Stella, expanded with a brick-and-mortar Fedoroff’s Roast Pork nearby.

Roast pork — on crusty rolls from Parisi Bakery in Manhattan (“the closest to Sarcone’s I could find,” Fedoroff said) — was to be their calling card, but cheesesteaks routinely outsell roast pork by 5-1. “No one in New York City knows what roast pork is,” Dave Fedoroff said with a sigh.

Fedoroff, 37, said 90% of the cheesesteaks get Cheez Whiz, his own cheese of choice. His people chop the onions big, lay on a lot of beef, nap it in Whiz, and overstuff the rolls. He uses unseeded rolls for cheesesteaks because he thinks sesame seeds clash with the taste of Whiz; seeded rolls are available, though.

Ledges line the walls of the narrow shop as eating counters. There is also a Fedoroff’s stand inside the Barclays Center, where the Nets play. Fedoroff’s is still open at Smorgasbord, though the market has closed for the season.

Fedoroff’s Roast Pork, 178 N. 10th St., Brooklyn. Cheesesteak price is $21.95.

» READ MORE: The fantastic cheesesteak from 6,700 miles away, in Japan

Staten Islander Giacomo Pisano (“call me Jack or G”) got a taste of Philly while attending Valley Forge Military Academy in Wayne, near his uncles’ pizzerias. When his time came to open a shop 10 years ago, “there was so much pizza everywhere,” said Pisano, now 29. “And there were absolutely no steaks in Staten Island.”

Lightbulb moment.

Pisano opened his first boldly decorated G’s Cheesesteaks in 2015 and followed up with a food truck for catering. A second store opened in Point Pleasant Beach, N.J., before partners and investors joined him for a location in Toms River, N.J., and a corner store with seating on the Lower East Side, a matzo ball’s throw from Katz’s Deli.

A Staten Island bakery, which Pisano declined to name, bakes plain and seeded rolls to his specs. The meat is rib eye, sourced from one particular butcher, “which we chop thin but not too thin,” he said. Cheese options include Cooper Sharp (“our main go-to”), white American, mild provolone, mozzarella, and Whiz.

All told, G’s was one of the better steaks we sampled, with a gooey combo of beef and cheese and well-seasoned onions.

Besides the Lower East Side location, another Manhattan shop is due soon on Eighth Avenue at 31st Street, across from Madison Square Garden. Pisano also said they were opening in other cities, but not Philadelphia. “I respect the culture there and I look up to a lot of those guys — Angelo’s, Pat’s, Geno’s, and all that. They paved the way for little guys like us. So I don’t think I would.”

G’s Cheesesteaks, 6 Avenue B. Also in Staten Island, N.Y., and Point Pleasant and Toms River, N.J. Cheesesteak price is $15.99.

» READ MORE: All you need to know about the Philly cheesesteak

The exclamation point properly punctuates the cheesesteak backstory about Mama’s Too!, a pizzeria with locations in the West Village and Upper West Side that grew out of a family’s company.

Before adding cheesesteaks to the menu two years ago, Queens-born owner Frank Tuttolomondo, 36, said, “I hadn’t really had a classic cheesesteak, to be honest.” (He has since visited Angelo’s in South Philadelphia and Cafe Carmela in Northeast Philadelphia.)

Mama’s cheesesteak starts on the grill as shaved ribeye, sliced that day. “Then we steam it up with some onions, and the moisture content from the onions mixed in with the steam from the grill gives a little life to the meat. We cover it real quick, take a lid off, and then we use our own cheese fondue.”

Cheese fondue? I guess that’s a house Whiz. It’s Fontina, white Cheddar, Cooper Sharp, grated Parmesan, ground black pepper, and a little white wine, Tuttolomondo said. “We’re just happy everyone likes it.”

Tuttolomondo bakes his own rolls, and “we like them a little bit more on the well-done side. I’m a fan of sandwiches that don’t sog up, especially when people take it to go.” There’s a seating area. Steaks must be ordered in-person.

My editor, Matt Buchanan, thought it tasted like “a straightforward ‘Cooper Sharp, chopped beef, sauteed onions on seeded roll’ sitch.” He said the roll was crustier and stiffer, and the beef a little chewier than the average he’d had in Philadelphia at places like Angelo’s or Bar Jawn. “But I think it was on the level.” He visited Mama’s Too! with a friend, originally from Philadelphia but away for 20 years, who craved a softer roll — which was the norm back then. She happened to grow up adding ketchup to her cheesesteak.

Mama’s Too!, 323-325 Bleecker St. and 2750 Broadway. Cheesesteak price is $20.

Evan Stein’s wild path to a burgeoning New York cheesesteak empire started in 2005. A Philadelphia native and 1993 graduate of Lehigh University, he bounced around in Wall Street finance jobs and started an internet advertising company with a buddy.

After selling it off at age 30, he decided that New York needed cheesesteaks. He cold-called Tony Luke Jr., and in 2005 they opened a Tony Luke’s on 42nd Street and Ninth Avenue that lasted a New York minute. Stein, now 53, reopened it in 2006 as Shorty’s, grew it to five locations, brought in private equity in 2016, and left in 2019. Bad scene, he said.

He regrouped the bar-restaurants in 2021 as Olde City Cheesesteak & Brews with new backers. There are three Manhattan locations with a fourth on the way.

I’d put up Olde City’s with the tops in the Philadelphia area. The rolls, from Liscio’s in South Jersey, are par-baked, shipped in, and baked through the day to a crispy exterior. The standard cheeses are available. Because this is not a Philadelphia shop, Stein gets away with offering such toppings as bacon chipotle and honey barbecue. All this, and Eagles games on Sundays.

The Eighth Avenue location is the closest to Penn Station among all of these shops.

Olde City Cheesesteaks & Brew, 66 Madison Ave., 201 Eighth Ave., and 576 Ninth Ave. Cheesesteak price is $16.

When Aaron Hoffman moved to New York from the King of Prussia-Conshohocken area, he was managing the bar program for the W Hotel but noticed “there were no good cheesesteak places in the city.” Twenty years ago, he opened a bar with his brother, Todd, in the West Village and put cheesesteaks on the menu. “A couple Eagles fans walked in,” Hoffman said. “They’re like, ‘You guys show the Eagles games?’ We just blew up from there because there were no Eagles bars in the city. We got plenty of hand gestures when we put ‘E-A-G-L-E-S’ on the windows.” They went from one TV to four and later opened a second location in the Financial District.

The sandwiches, now made on seedless rolls baked in-house from scratch, don’t have that cheese-and-meat meld that other shops do. Unless you order Whiz, Wogie’s cooks place sliced cheese directly on the roll, to allow it to melt from the steaming meat layered on top. Hoffman said customers like to see the cheese.

Who’s Wogie? While searching for a name, Hoffman said his mother mentioned that his late father, Chester County pizzeria owner William Styer Hoffman, was nicknamed Wogie, pronounced “whoa-jee” with a soft g.

When Hoffman got out his father’s Spring-Ford High yearbook to look up the reference, a $100 bill fell out from between the pages. “I framed that,” said Hoffman, 47. “That’s my dad’s investment.”

Wogies Bar & Grill, 39 Greenwich Ave. and 44 Trinity Place. Cheesesteak price is $19.20.

Bill Zogorski, who grew up in Newtown, Bucks County, hopes to open a restaurant with a small menu of quality sandwiches someday. For the last two months, he has been popping up in New York’s Chinatown with cheesesteaks under the name Ziggy’s.

Zogorski, 35, worked in the Bay Area tech industry before heading east, where he began waiting tables. (He’s now at Pastis.) For his first pop-up, he set up a portable propane grill with a flattop at a Lower Manhattan skate park. I found him recently outside of a high school, where he grew a curious crowd.

Zogorski uses picanha or tri-tip from Primo’s Prime Meats, his own cheese fondue, sauteed onions, and sesame-seeded kaiser rolls from a bakery in Queens that he swipes with mayo and toasts on the flattop.

This is not a regulation cheesesteak, though a fine cheesesteak does not have to be. Anthony Bourdain famously said that Donkey’s Place in Camden, which serves its cheesesteaks on poppy-seeded kaiser rolls, ranks up there with Philly’s finest. Ziggy’s is a creamy, indulgent sandwich worth tracking down.

Ziggy’s next scheduled pop-up is Oct. 8 at the River at 102 Bayard St. in New York’s Chinatown. Follow on Instagram. Cheesesteak price is $15.