Who Invented the Philly Cheesesteak? Pat Olivieri's Story

The Philly cheesesteak was invented by Pat Olivieri, a South Philadelphia hot dog vendor, around 1930, according to his family and to most of the written record. That is the answer you will hear at 9th Street and Passyunk Avenue. It is also an answer that rests almost entirely on the Olivieri family's own telling, and the cheese, the part that makes it a cheesesteak, came later and has two competing dates.

Who invented the Philly cheesesteak? The family's version

Pat's King of Steaks credits two brothers: Pat Olivieri (1907-1974) and Harry Olivieri (1916-2006). They opened a hot dog stall in 1930 at the meeting of 9th Street, Wharton Street and Passyunk Avenue.

The story as Pat's current owner, Frank Olivieri, told it to Philadelphia Magazine in 2008 goes like this. His great-uncle Pat ran a hot dog cart near the Italian Market, one of the country's first open-air markets, a block away. One day Pat was tired of hot dogs and sent his brother, Frank's grandfather, to the butcher for scraps of meat. Pat cooked them on a hot dog roll. A cab driver saw the sandwich and asked for one. Pat had beef for only one, so they split it. The cab driver told him to stop selling hot dogs and sell these instead.

Frank Olivieri's own summary of the moment: "And that was the invention of the steak sandwich."

Notice the dates do not agree. Philadelphia Magazine's introduction says Pat invented the sandwich in 1930, the year the stand opened. Another telling puts the cab driver scene in 1933, with the sandwich sold to him for ten cents, and it is the version the family tells. Other accounts say only "early 1930s." The honest range is 1930 to 1933, and no contemporary document pins it down.

Was the steak sandwich already around?

Yes, in a plainer form. Celeste Morello, a South Philadelphia historian and author of Philadelphia's Italian Foods, told the magazine that 19th-century cookbooks included recipes for a "beefsteak sandwich." The Olivieris, she said, did it differently, with different bread and different seasonings.

A 1987 exhibition catalog from the Library Company of Philadelphia and the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, describes the cheesesteak as developed in the early 20th century by combining frizzled beef, onions and cheese in a small loaf of bread. It names nobody.

So the fair claim for Pat Olivieri is not that he thought of putting beef in bread. Cooks had done that for a century. It is that his stand, in a largely Italian neighborhood of workers, turned a lunch scrap into the thing people lined up for. Morello says there is no sign of cheese on the sandwich before Pat's added it.

A hot dog cart that moved indoors

The sandwich did not stay on the cart. Frank Olivieri says a man named Joe Butch owned a building across from the stand, with a kitchen upstairs and a tavern below. When the weather turned cold, Joe Butch suggested Pat make his sandwiches inside. Eventually, in Olivieri's telling, more people were eating than drinking, so the tavern owners cut a hole in the wall and served sandwiches through it. Pat later took over the whole building.

This is a family story too, and it has the shape of one. But it fits what is on the record: a hot dog business that became a steak business. For the story of how another street food grew from a vendor's cart, see the history of hot dogs.

Pat also opened a branch on Ridge Avenue, which matters for the next question.

Who put the cheese on? Two dates, two cheeses

The first cheesesteaks had no cheese. Who added it is where the sources split.

Frank Olivieri's 2008 account: "The cheese really came up in the '40s out at the Pat's on Ridge Avenue. The first cheese was a provolone cheese." The man responsible, he said, was a manager named Joe Lorenza, known as Cocky Joe, whom he described as "always drunk" and "a waste of our time." Even so, he said, Lorenza "was the first person to put cheese on the sandwich."

A different version is attributed to Pat's son Herb Olivieri: American cheese, added by Lorenza in March 1951, at the Ridge Avenue location. Other family members may say provolone. Bill Proetto of Jim's Steaks, a rival shop, told the magazine that cheese "didn't come around until the '50s or so."

That leaves the 1940s versus 1951, and provolone versus American. Everyone in the story agrees on the man, Lorenza, and the place, Ridge Avenue. Nobody has produced a menu or a receipt.

Claim	Source	Cheese	Date
Lorenza at Ridge Avenue	Frank Olivieri, 2008	Provolone	1940s
Lorenza at Ridge Avenue	Herb Olivieri	American	March 1951
Cheese arrives	Bill Proetto, Jim's Steaks	Not specified	About the 1950s

Where did Cheez Whiz come from?

Cheez Whiz cannot be part of the original story. Kraft first marketed it in 1952. Frank Olivieri Sr. first added it at Pat's South Philadelphia shop in the late 1950s.

There is a reason the Olivieri brothers were hesitant to put cheese on a steak sandwich there at all. Many of their customers kept kosher, and mixing cheese with meat is not kosher. Frank Sr. reportedly spooned the Whiz on after the sandwich was assembled, and it caught on.

Joey Vento, who later opened Geno's, put it in his own words: "He claims he invented the Whiz. Okay. I'll give him that." In 2008, Frank Olivieri said Pat's sold ten sandwiches to every one at Geno's. Whiz is reported to outsell American cheese at Pat's by roughly eight or ten to one.

Pat's versus Geno's, and a rivalry the press built

Pat's was not always on its current corner. According to Frank Olivieri, by the early 1960s Pat had moved to Los Angeles, and his own father and grandfather bought the 9th and Passyunk location from him around the time Geno's arrived in 1966.

Geno's founder Joey Vento was 23 when he opened a small grill across the street, with about $2,000. He told Philadelphia Magazine the money came from his wife's father. The name was first spelled Gino's, Olivieri said, but a hamburger chain run by the football player Gino Marchetti already used it.

Olivieri thinks the famous feud was partly the media's doing. He dates it to about 1970 to 1973, and says it grew after Rocky in 1976, when reporters kept asking what Geno's was doing in response to Pat's.

Vento did not accept second place. He claimed his sandwich was the more authentic one, made with thinly sliced rib eye, while he said Pat's had gone to chopped meat. The two shops have argued about it ever since.

Other Philadelphia steak shops

Pat's is not the only founder in the story. Bill Proetto said Jim's Steaks opened in West Philadelphia in 1939, at 62nd and Noble. Its founder sat in the front window, sold coffee to men on the corner, and eventually started making steak sandwiches. Jim's is miles from Pat's, and Olivieri says it never competed with him much.

Proetto bought Jim's around 1965 and opened a South Street branch on July 4, 1976. In the late 1970s Philadelphia Magazine named it the best cheesesteak in the city, and he said business took off. The sandwich's celebrity, in other words, was spread across several shops and a good deal of free press. To trace how a sandwich becomes a category, see who invented the sandwich. The neighborhood that fed it is part of the story told in how immigration changed American food.

What the record supports

The best-supported claim is narrow. A South Philadelphia stand run by the Olivieri brothers was selling a chopped or thinly sliced steak sandwich by the early 1930s, and the family has said so for decades. Cheese was added at a Pat's shop on Ridge Avenue by a manager named Joe Lorenza, in either the 1940s or 1951. Whiz arrived after Kraft launched it in 1952.

Pat Olivieri died in 1974. His brother Harry lived until 2006, when he was 90.

Questions people ask

Did the Philly cheesesteak originally have cheese on it?

No. The first Philly cheesesteaks sold by the Olivieri brothers in South Philadelphia had no cheese. Cheese was added later at a Pat's shop on Ridge Avenue by a manager named Joe Lorenza, in the 1940s by Frank Olivieri's account or in March 1951 by Herb Olivieri's, and nobody has produced a menu or receipt.

When was Cheez Whiz first put on a cheesesteak?

Cheez Whiz came well after the original sandwich. Kraft first marketed it in 1952, and Frank Olivieri Sr. reportedly first added it at Pat's King of Steaks in South Philadelphia in the late 1950s. He spooned it on after the sandwich was assembled, partly because many customers kept kosher, and it caught on.

Is Pat's or Geno's the original Philly cheesesteak shop?

Pat's is the original. The Olivieri brothers opened their stand in 1930 at 9th Street and Passyunk Avenue, while Joey Vento opened Geno's across the street in 1966. Frank Olivieri thinks the feud between the two shops was partly built by the press, especially after the film Rocky in 1976.

Was there a steak sandwich in Philadelphia before Pat Olivieri?

Yes, in a plainer form. Historian Celeste Morello told Philadelphia Magazine that 19th-century cookbooks had recipes for a beefsteak sandwich. Her view was that the Olivieris did it differently, with other bread and seasonings, and that there is no sign of cheese on the sandwich before Pat's added it.

Filed under Origin Stories