Cheesesteaks in paradise
After a decade of living in Philly, during my annual pilgrimage back to Hawai’i, I decided to try the cheesesteaks.
The cheesesteak at Rob’s Good Times Grill in Lihue, Kauai, doesn’t look like one you’d find here in Philly. It has chunks of grilled steak with Swiss cheese, both red and green bell peppers, and it comes with a ramekin of house-made chili peppah water (a ubiquitous, vinegary hot sauce in Hawai’i). It’s served with a side of steak fries covered in teriyaki sauce, mayo, green onions, and nori komi furikake. As I ate it, wild chickens ran around my chair, eager to catch an errant crumb — go birds, if you will.
I’ve made Philly my home for more than a decade, so I have been thoroughly indoctrinated into the church of the cheesesteak. I’ve reported on Philly’s most famous export as far as Bahrain. I’m even married to an award-winning cheesesteak maker.
Every year, I make a pilgrimage back to the islands of Oahu, where I grew up, and Kauai, where my family is originally from, to visit relatives and eat everything I can’t get in Philly. Except for this past week, when, inspired by my colleagues' reporting on Japan’s most serious cheesesteak and the best cheesesteaks that New York City has to offer, I decided to put a couple of cheesesteaks in Hawai’i to the test.
Captain Cook may have named the Hawaiian Islands the Sandwich Islands in 1778 (for the 4th Earl of Sandwich, his patron and not well, any actual sandwiches), but the name didn’t stick. Sandwiches never caught on, either. Hawai’i has plenty of other foods to boast about, as the most diverse state in the nation: Immigrants brought pantry items from China, deep sea fishing skills from Japan, baking techniques and stews from Portugal, ferments from Korea, pasteles from Puerto Rico, and many, many more foods and methods that mingled with Polynesian ingredients — giving rise to one of the most interesting and multicultural cuisines in the world. (I am a little biased).
Lihue is a sleepy town on a sleepy island, where restaurants are rarely open past 7 p.m. An exception is Rob’s, a sports bar that is open until 10 p.m. and serves pub food along with local favorites like chili pepper chicken, burgers, and BBQ. The cheesesteak costs $19.50, before tax and tip.
My Kauai family is enormous and composed of a particular breed of islanders who rarely leave their respective towns, much less the island. I met a few of them at Rob’s one night. “What is a cheesesteak?” my Auntie Judy asked when I placed an order for one, alongside a plate of staples that included kalua pig (a smoky pulled pork typically slow cooked in an underground oven), lomi lomi salmon (diced tomatoes, salted salmon, and onion), ahi poke, and poi. I figured the best way to explain a cheesesteak would be with one in hand.
It gave me the same culture shock as eating poke on the mainland
When it arrived, Rob’s cheesesteak didn’t resemble anything that might pass for one in Philly. The bread wasn’t quite crusty enough; it gave way to meat juice soaking as a hot dog bun might. The meat was the opposite of thin-sliced, and we were certain it was the same beef that my Uncle Tommy consumed in the form of a chopped steak plate with rice.
It wasn’t a bad sandwich, but it gave me the same culture shock as eating poke on the mainland. Poke in Hawai’i is a composed dish of raw fish (or crab, preserved beef, breadfruit or tofu) seasoned sparingly with soy sauce or mayo, Hawaiian salt, inamona (a condiment made with kukui nuts), and seaweed. In Philly, you normally see it woefully bastardized and in the form of a deconstructed salad or sushi roll.
“In a cheesesteak, the roll is most important,” my chef husband Ari Miller, the former owner of Musi, said. “It has to have an outside with chew, is soft on the inside, and has enough crumb to sop up the meat juices.” Our server, Everett, informed us that the Rob’s roll is baked locally by Deli & Bread Connection and that it’s called a “hoagie roll.” It was the first time I’ve ever heard the word “hoagie” uttered on Kauai.
A few days later on Oahu, Ari and I ordered a “classic Philly cheesesteak” from Earl, a counter service restaurant that has three locations across Oahu. A cheesesteak is $16.95 before tax and tip or adding a side of waffle fries or imported Utz chips. There are four different cheesesteaks on the menu. The Earl’s cheesesteak consists of sirloin, white American cheese, provolone, spicy mayo, grilled onions, and sweet peppers. There’s also a chipotle chicken cheesesteak and a veggie cheesesteak that replaces the meat in an Earl’s cheesesteak with mushrooms. (Other offerings include a po boy, turkey club, an Italian sub with four different kinds of meat, burgers, and fried chicken sandwiches.)
Justin Parvizimotlagh, 37, is the Baltimore native who started selling what he calls “subs” in the Kaimuki neighborhood of Oahu in 2014, a project that has since evolved into today’s mini chain. “When I first started Earl, I actually wanted to start a pizza restaurant,” he said. “But after trying to get funding together and realizing what it cost to open a pizza place with a pizza oven and dough mixer, plus all the space needed for prep, I realized I wasn’t financially ready.”
A decade later, Parvizimotlagh is still making “subs” and serving a diverse clientele of locals, tourists, and military stationed in Hawai’i.
Earl’s cheesesteaks are immensely popular and on average, its three locations sell 6,000 cheesesteaks per week. They occasionally run other specials that are near and dear to the hearts of Philadelphians, like a breakfast sandwich featuring pork roll, essentially East Coast Spam. (You can look at Spam as Hawai’i’s answer to pork roll.) In true Philly style, Earl’s cheesesteaks simultaneously bring Philadelphians a taste of home and riles them up.
“Philly people come in and say we’ve got it all wrong pretty regularly, saying, ‘You need to cook the onions this way, or you need to do this, or use just Cheez Whiz,’” Parvizimotlagh said. “People from Philly are extremely opinionated. I don’t ever take it personally if someone from Philly comes in and says our cheesesteak isn’t authentic.”
The classic cheesesteak that I ordered at Earl has evolved over the years. I bit into a sandwich built on a roll that has structural integrity and chew, is unmistakably coated in semolina flour, and is reminiscent of a crusty pizza. “It’s baked especially for us by La Tour Bakehouse,” Parvizimotlagh said. “We call it a semolina baguette and it’s not readily available on the island. It’s a high-hydration French baguette and the semolina on the outside gives it an East Coast feel.”
The interior of the sandwich is surprisingly creamy, thanks to the addition of Best Foods mayo (the same stuff as Hellman’s to anyone buying it outside of the Asia Pacific region and the western U.S.). For the meat, Parvizimotlagh uses thin-sliced prime top sirloin, and the cheese is a blend of white American cheese and Cheez Whiz.
“People from Philly are extremely opinionated. I don’t ever take it personally if someone from Philly comes in and says our cheesesteak isn’t authentic.”
The result is goopier than the average cheesesteak found in Philadelphia, but it’s not far off. When I asked Parvizimotlagh what his favorite cheesesteak in Philadelphia was, without any hesitation, he answered, “Angelo’s.” That said, Parvizimotlagh is originally from Baltimore, where apparently “people put lettuce, tomato, mayo, and a hot cherry pepper relish on their Philly cheesesteaks.”
For a moment, sitting in one of Earl’s colorful booths, I forget that I’m in Hawai’i. The union of beef, onions, melted cheese, on a respectable roll is transportive — far more than the reverse experience of eating what masquerades for Hawaiian poke on the mainland.