A new cheesesteak empire in the making: Gazzos Steaks will open a Main Line location this fall

Gazzos Steaks, which in two years has ridden social-media buzz from a food truck to a brick-and-mortar restaurant, is planning a new shop in Ardmore.

Gazzos plans to open a takeout window this fall at 2528 Haverford Rd. in Ardmore Park, which over the years has housed Corbino’s BBQ and Next Stop Coffee. Though it will provide window service only — with a capacity equivalent to about a food truck and a half — it has about 10 parking spaces out front. “In itself, that is pretty huge in that area,” said Joe Lewis, who runs Gazzos with Mike Lamson. There will be a patio for outside seating.

Lamson and Lewis are South Philadelphians who married sisters from the Pottstown area. They relocated there, and Lamson went to work for Lewis at his auto shop. Dissatisfied with local cheesesteaks, they decided to ease into the food business by buying what Lewis called a “very rundown food truck we found.”

How rundown? “It had gunshot holes through it,” Lewis said. “We figured, we’ll fix it up, throw it up on this hill on Route 100 [in Upper Pottsgrove], and see what it does. I mean, worst-case scenario — it doesn’t work and we’ll just sell the truck.”

They named it Gazzos, after Tony Gazzo, the loanshark whom Rocky Balboa collected debts for in Rocky. “We’re South Philly guys and wanted to keep that connection to home no matter where we were.” They spell it without an apostrophe because it looks better typographically, Lewis said.

Sales were not brisk in the early days, in fall 2022. “In the first month or two, we were lucky if we sold 15 sandwiches in a day,” Lewis said. “About three months in, we had a couple people that were food influencers.”

One of them runs the Instagram and TikTok account @godfather_of_meat. “We didn’t know who he was and we didn’t even know he came, but he posted a video on Tiktok about our cheesesteaks,” Lewis said. “Literally the day after, we went from like 12 to 50, to 100, to a couple of hundred to three hundred and then it kept going up and up and up.”

Lewis and Lamson bought another food truck, which they station at Root Down Brewing’s TBD Bar in Phoenixville Wednesday to Sunday. Last spring, they took over a corner store in Pottstown for their first physical location.

Aversa Italian Bakery in Turnersville makes a custom roll. They use fresh sliced grass-fed ribeye, not frozen, sourced from a South Philadelphia butcher. “We spend a lot of money on it, but we want to put the best product out there,” Lewis said.

On Saturday, Gazzos won this year’s Bite for the Fight competition, part of the Fight on Makenna Foundation’s festival at the Greater Philadelphia Expo Center.

One of Gazzos’ winning sandwiches was the Sanatoga, which is named after an exit off of Route 422 and topped with 14-hour smoked Cooper Sharp cheese and fried onions. Though the cheesesteak game in the Philadelphia area has been improving lately, it’s safe to say that most shops in the western suburbs are not smoking their own cheese.

Lewis said there was no real plan for further growth. “We’re just free-styling, feeling out what our best moves are,” he said. “We’re not looking to go crazy. We want to make sure we’re keeping everything consistent throughout every place.”