One Roll to Rule Them All

Rolls from Del Rossi’s in Northern Liberties / Photograph by Gene Smirnov

Welcome to Cheesesteak 2.0. A new era of Philly’s iconic sandwich is upon us, and to celebrate, we’re taking a look at the movers and makers redefining the genre. Go here to dig in to our full coverage.

For the entire history of the cheesesteak, every debate, innovation, and personal hill to die on has hinged on what goes in the roll: fresh versus frozen ribeye, fineness of the chop, Barclay Prime’s truffled exploits, is mayo a permissible condiment or unholy smear? Until 2019, that is, when Danny DiGiampietro opened Angelo’s with a cheesesteak on seeded bread in the dark-’n’-crusty style of his Sarcone in-laws, and the entire conversation pivoted to the roll itself.

“There’s magic in that bread,” says Mike View, the sandwich evangelist who runs the Pancakes and Protein Shakes Instagram account. Influenced by Angelo’s success, “more people than not now are doing a special loaf and putting more work into their bread.”

From Bar Jawn’s house-baked loaves in Manayunk to Café Carmela’s seeded Carangi’s in the Great Northeast, we are in the golden age of the crunchy cheesesteak. And while Angelo’s is its undisputed godfather — and serves our personal favorite steak in town, mostly because of its mahogany-crusted, sesame-paved, unparalleled bread — the evolution away from the squishier Liscio-Amoroso school exists within a greater context of changing tastes and attentions.

“People are into artisanal things that take effort, not a bunch of factories making a mass-produced product,” says Nish Patel, whose cheesesteaks at Del Rossi’s come on sourdough rolls made with a 20-year-old San Francisco mother and 48 hours of fermentation. When he took over the high-volume shop in 2020, the same-old, same-old bread was fine for the neighboring office workers, but when the pandemic hit, he had to reposition the business “to get people to get out of their house and travel to us by making a better product — and making it appealing on social media.”

Hand-scored and baked dark, Patel’s gorgeous loaves look more like something out of a Parisian boulangerie than a corner store at 4th and Spring Garden. There’s no denying that a photo of a gooey cheesesteak on this bread plays better aesthetically than one on the pale, flaccid rolls that once dominated the category. But is it actually better, or are we just caught in an algorithmic crusty-roll feedback loop?

Certainly, both can be true. That the vessel is viral doesn’t discount that it’s an objective improvement. It holds up better in transit, which really counts considering our borderline codependent post-pandemic relationship with third-party delivery platforms, and the textural contrast is something we mortals are genetically hardwired to respond to. “There’s nothing really like biting into a long hoagie roll, getting that crunch, and then immediately into soft bread and whatever the filling is,” says Paffuto’s Jake Loeffler, whose cheesesteak (Cooper Sharp, caramelized onions, the lacto-fermented house hot sauce) rides a Sarcone’s roll, “toasted to give that added crunch, that added Maillard reaction, that little extra depth of flavor.” Please wipe your drool.

While Angelo’s et al. have set the new cheesesteak standard, there are still adherents to the pliable, smooshy style. “Some people just like the cheesesteak from their mom-and-pop store on a random loaf of bread — that’s just their spot,” says View. And that’s okay. You can still find them all over the city; Big Cheesesteak Roll ain’t hurting. But the steaks we can’t stop thinking about late at night, those sesame-seeded centerfolds — they put the bread, not the beef, in the spotlight. “It’s what you’re smelling first, what your teeth are going through first, and what you’re tasting last,” View says. “The bread is everything. That vessel is everything.”

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Published as “Bread Heads” in the April 2025 issue of Philadelphia magazine.