Please, Don’t Let a Pittsburgh Place Win This Cheesesteak Poll

Photo via Flickr

Let’s be fair: There is no reason a cheesesteak made in Pittsburgh can’t be good. The Groove Cheesesteak Company — which apparently used to be called Southside Steaks, and still has that URL for its website — may make a good cheesesteak.

In fact, it probably does! (“Southside Steaks” sounds like a more authentic name for a steak shop, though.) There’s no reason that a steak shop has to be in the city of Philadelphia to make a good cheesesteak. Anthony Bourdain himself said Donkey’s in Camden has the best. But there is no way we can let a Pittsburgh place win USA Today’s Best Cheesesteak in Pennsylvania contest.

Working with Sandwich America, USA Today’s “10 best” site has selected 20 places in Pennsylvania that are contenders for the best cheesesteak in the state. Eleven of them are in Philadelphia, and three more are in the suburbs. One, Groove, is in Pittsburgh.

But Groove is currently winning the contest. That news comes from CBS’s affiliate in Pittsburgh, which told Pittsburgh residents to vote for the Groove Cheesesteak Company in the contest.

We cannot let that happen. Please vote for a Philadelphia cheesesteak place, or one in the suburbs at least, to win this contest. It doesn’t matter if Groove actually has good steaks. We simply cannot let a Pittsburgh cheesesteak place win this. We need to band together and prevent this from happening. Perhaps Philadelphia splitting the vote 11 ways will mess this up, but the Philly metro area is much larger than Pittsburgh’s. We can do this.

If a Pittsburgh cheesesteak is named the best in the state, then all is lost. Vote here.