The Best Philly Cheesesteak

I went out with my family a couple of weeks ago at Gather Greenville, an outdoor seating area surrounded by multiple restaurants housed in shipping containers. It’s very millennial. As we were walking around looking at the options, I heard someone say that this one store had the “best Philly Cheesesteak.” As a lover of cheesesteak sandwiches, I decided I had to check it out. To be frank, I was not disappointed. The steak had been packed into the bun and was spilling out the sides. The cheese was melted perfectly and the juice had soaked the bottom of the bun. It was a good Philly Cheesesteak, but it was not the best.

The best Philly Cheesesteak I’ve ever had is at Salem’s Diner in Homewood, Alabama. The place doesn’t look like much from the outside. It looks like a regular hole-in-the-wall diner, but the cheesesteaks are impeccable. The ratio of peppers, cheese, and steak are unmatched, and the juices do not ruin the integrity of the bun holding the thing together. It’s delicious.

I was first introduced to Salem’s by my RUF campus minister at the tail-end of my freshman year. I’d had a pretty rough year and had just started going to Samford RUF. The minister asked to meet me for coffee, and during our initial meeting I mentioned how I liked cheesesteaks. He said we had to go to Salem’s, so about two weeks before finals I had my first Salem’s cheesesteak.

In between bites, I began talking about my struggles of the past year, how hard it had been making friends, my continued confusion over church and the Bible, and how I was just lonely; and the campus minister did something I wasn’t use to, he listened. He didn’t try to tell me where my feelings were wrong, or what I needed to do to fix it. He just let me talk. It was the best Philly I’d ever had.

During my sophomore year, going to Salem’s together kind of became our thing. About every two weeks, I would eat a great sandwich and talk. We talked about grace and forgiveness in that diner, how to forgive my church in my past and how to accept grace with no strings attached. We talked about the friends I was making and school. I gave an extensive recap of my trip to Rome over some fresh fries, broke down the RUF Spring Break trip to Chicago with him as I sipped a Coke, and told him about my plan to reach underclassmen as we both waited for the fresh Philly to cool a little. I loved Salem and those sandwiches.

The campus minister left Samford after my sophomore year to lead a RUF at another campus, and I never had the heart to go back to Salem’s. For whatever reason, their Philly Cheesesteak didn’t seem appealing anymore. I sort of stopped eating Philly Cheesesteaks after that too. I’ll have one ever once in a while when I’m feeling nostalgic, like at Gather Greenville, but I’ve never had one quite the same. It’s never as good.

I guess what makes the “best Philly Cheesesteak” is ultimately subjective. Some people will want the juices to make the bun soggy, others will want the bun toasted. Some will want more peppers and less cheese, other will want few peppers and tons of cheese. I don’t know if it is possible to have an objectively “best” cheesesteak, but I know that I had mine at Salem’s with my campus minister. Yeah, sometimes there wasn’t enough meat, or the bun was too soggy, but that didn’t matter. They were still the best sandwiches, and I don’t think I’m going to find a better one.