Cafe Carmela, Winchester Park, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Nancy and I could have driven up to Trenton to complete our 10K state capital walk there and driven back in the same day, thereby saving the cost of a hotel room. There are pearls that are beyond price, however, and we happily ponied up for a great cultural and educational experience. We were going to have lunch with none other than Barry Zukerman, the world’s leading authority on the cheesesteak.

Barry has a blog, BZMaestroEats, that covers food, classical music, film, geopolitics, and greatness in all fields, and I’ll say right up front that you should read his report of our meal, here. Barry comes to his blog after a career on the food and film beats at the Philadelphia Inquirer, and a lifetime of eating. I learned of his blog only in 2022 when he undertook to identify the ten best cheesesteaks in the Philadelphia region by sampling 100 highly regarded cheesesteak venues during the course of the year. I honestly feel he deserved Public Service and Investigative Reporting Pulitzers for his careful and unusually thoughtful analysis. Alas, the only one I know who knows how to write a Pulitzer nomination is Barry, who prefers to hide his light under a bushel.

The venue Barry suggested was Cafe Carmela, a consensus Top 5 among the Philadelphia cheesesteak cognoscenti, and people were filling the tables even before the noon opening.

Carmela’s, unlike many cheesesteak places, offers a menu that includes pizzas, pasta dishes, and salads, as well as sandwiches. It’s a pleasant, evocative setting.

Although highly regarded, Carmela’s cheesesteak didn’t make Barry’s Top Ten, due to an imbalance of cheese to meat in the sandwich: too much cheese. He had planned a return trip to order a cheesesteak, light on the cheese, and we decided to split two cheesesteaks, one regular and one light on the cheese, for a scientific comparison.

But first, we whet our appetites with some fried mozzarella.

Look inside.

I hardly ever get fried mozzarella. I’ve eaten too many versions made with supermarket cheese sticks that must have been fried in 250-degree oil. These were a revelation. The cheese was very good, creamy and fresh, and Carmela’s fried it properly and gave it a nice crust. The tomato sauce also was executed well. It made me rethink fried mozzarella.

Then the cheesesteaks, the Don Cheech: Here’s the regular version,

and here’s the light on the cheese version.

They look very similar, don’t they? I know I got them right by the order in which I took the photos. To get a better sense of the difference, take a look at this side view of the regular.

Now that’s a lot of cheese. A whole lot. Actually, both of them had a lot of cheese, Cooper Sharp cheese, to be specific. It has a wonderful flavor and, as you can see, the melting quality is extraordinary. As you can read in Barry’s review, he thought that even the light cheese version had too much cheese, enough to drown out the flavor of the meat and its seasonings. I agree that it dominated both sandwiches, although not in the ruinous way that thick or sweet sauces can drown the flavor of barbecue. But many — most — people like treacly sauces, and millions overload everything with cheese. In this case, I was so taken by the Cooper Sharp that I enjoyed both versions.

I need to mention the rolls. They’re by Carangi. In contrast to the floppy, insipid soft rolls that carry most cheesesteaks, these rolls have real flavor and texture, including a crust graced with sesame seeds, which make a surprising difference in breads. And the bread makes a huge difference in a sandwich.

Nancy, meanwhile, chose Carmela’s Giardino–eggplant, arugula, and tomato with lots of mozzarella and balsamic.

This was a very good sandwich (I got a bite or two), but more than Nancy could handle. She especially liked the bread, another great Carangi roll, and the cheese, which was accented nicely by the balsamic. The bite of the arugula and the crispness of the eggplant on that Carangi roll created a well-balanced and flavorful sandwich.

The meal was a revelation. I have derided the cheesesteak in the past, and I remain wary of the breed. Now, however, I see the potential of the sandwich. Now I have yet another type of sandwich to overeat, another gateway to a rich, full life.

We finished, and although earlier I’d thought of going to another cheesesteak place, one of Barry’s Top Ten, but it was a lot of food, and I’d been thoroughly DiNic’ed and Hershel’ed at the Reading Terminal Market the day before, not to mention Bassett’ed about the head. And Nancy and Barry got into a soft serve ice cream discussion, and we headed home armed with Barry’s suggestions of two places locally owned places close to I-95.

What a wonderful lunch, and what a treat to meet with Barry! I’ve enjoyed the whole wide variety of topics on his blog, and his thoughtfulness and perceptiveness shine through delightfully at table. Even where your tastes differ (as ours do on, say, Chinese food), his insights and analysis are invaluable. Regardless of where you stand on the cheese issue, you certainly should try Cafe Carmela’s. Barry tells me that their pizzas are top notch. Give it a try, and subscribe to BZMaestroEats.

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