A Beast of a Sandwich: Delco’s Original

I’ve posted a few times on Delco Steaks. One of their several locations is only about 10 minutes from me, and they’re very good. But there is another, unrelated place further west in Chadds Ford, Delaware County, PA, called Delco’s Original Steaks & Hoagies. Their steaks get some tremendous raves on Facebook. They also had a huge ad on the outfield fence at the Phillies’ spring training stadium throughout the exhibition season. With that thing staring me in the face on TV, it was only a matter of time until I made the trek to check out their cheesesteak for myself. 

I made the journey more of a trek than it needed to be by putting too much faith in my now old-fashioned GPS, which took me to a condominium development with the same name as the road that Delco’s Original is on. Sometimes it’s better to rely on your mind rather than technology. 

After nearly an hour-and-a-quarter in the car, I finally arrived at my destination, which sits in a fairly nondescript shopping center.

It was about 12:45 when I walked in and the place was hopping. They have a seating area and I was fortunate to get the last free table after placing my order at the front counter and grabbing a drink from their soda fountain. 

The person who took my order brought it out to my table in a basket, which turned out to be fortunate, as this was a beast of a sandwich, with meat and cheese being so abundant, that some was bound to creep out from the top or back end of the roll upon my first few bites. 

Delco’s Original’s default roll is seedless. But I was aware that they offer a seeded roll as well and requested it. 

The seeded roll turned out to be from Sarcone’s, which is based in South Philadelphia and has been one of the most highly regarded bakers of Italian bread and rolls in the Philly region for years. And what a phenomenal roll it was; certainly up there with the best I’ve had. It’s flavor was so incredibly pure; like you’d imagine the perfect Italian roll would taste. The texture was also tremendous. I was well into my second half and still hearing the crunch as I bit into parts of the roll. 

There was a massive amount of finely chopped meat on this roll. There are times when I think meat can be chopped too finely, but it wasn’t a problem in this case. 

Yet there was also more than enough Cooper Sharp cheese to hold up to all of that meat. In fact, while you can’t really see it in the photos below, if I had one minor issue with this sandwich, it’s that there were a couple spots in it where I thought the cheese overwhelmed the meat. Although I know a lot of cheesesteak lovers for whom there is no such thing as too much cheese. It’s a matter of personal taste.

But that slight quibble is not enough to stop me from placing this cheesesteak in my top tier. And that top tier is getting increasingly crowded. If I wind up with more than 10 steak shops in it, I may give consideration to slightly expanding my eventual list of the Philly region’s top cheesesteaks a little beyond 10. I’ll probably also include a group of honorable mentions. There are a lot of great places that deserve to be on there, but I have to draw the line somewhere.

This sandwich was so big that I’m probably going to hold off on having another steak until next weekend, when my wife and I visit a very good place I’ve already written about with her family. I’m getting around to giving some places a second visit to solidify my confidence in how I rate them.