My Favorite Dish: Grigg Street Pizza’s Dry Aged Cheesesteak

Dave Portnoy’s 8.2 score of Grigg Street’s popular sour dough pizza was ehhh…good. Could’ve been higher even by a smidge in my opinion, but anything in the “8s” is a fine rating.

What Dave wasn’t wrong about, though, was scoring Grigg’s cheesesteak a full point higher at a 9.2, and despite being on a major pizza eating and scoring tour, he kept going back for another bite, saying, “This is great. You weren’t fuckin’ around.”

Portnoy dove in with his mouth. I’m about to dive into this haute “Philly” by giving you the culinary facts behind it.

To get the skinny on this appropriately greasy, pungently cheesy, slightly spicy, and beefy sandwich, I caught up with my homie, Grigg Street Pizza co-owner and chef, Matthew Watson.

Just like everything Matt and the crew at Grigg do, nothing is simple, and everything is done in-house, so this cheesesteak is no cheaply made wiz wit.

Watson starts with the New York strip. It’s wet marinated for a full day in Worcestershire, Italian long hot peppers, and “heavy peppercorns.” From there, it dry ages in the walk in for 4-5 days before the whole beef block is frozen so it can be shaved like you would a Philly.

Wait, wait, wait! What happened to Grigg’s OG steak sammich (left) that I covered in THIS ARTICLE? Watson hints at a possible return. “I might bring back other steak sandwich as a special,” he says. “Maybe do a nice Cuban sometime, maybe the fried chicken sandwich with pickles and coleslaw. Now the chicken parm is in its place. You can’t go wrong with a chicken parm. The Italian combo (right) is probably always gonna be my favorite. I’m an Italian combo slut.”

When you, the hungry customer, orders one, fire roasted pickled long hots, fire roasted green bell pepper, and white onion get tossed into a sauté pan in with the funky, rich, shaved beef so all these components can become one.

After the cook, they put a scoop of homemade pepper relish on a house-baked, toasty sourdough demi baguette, and like any good cheesesteak, it gets a cheese saucing comprised of 50% American, 25% provolone picante (you can REALLY taste the sharpness of it, btw), 25% aged mozzarella, and heavy cream.

But at Grigg, you ALWAYS stay for pizza. Right, Chef Jared Falco? Damn right.

Eat it there, or unwrap it, then crush it in privacy, and think about it every damn day that follows.

And since Portnoy’s “One Bite” review, this dry aged cheesesteak has really taken off.

“We went from making 25 a day, and then when Portnoy’s thing came out, we’ve hit days where we’ve made 200-plus,” Watson says. “It was nuts.”

griggstreetpizza.com