An Unlikely Place for an Elite Cheesesteak

Alessio’s Seafood Grille of Warrington, PA, doesn’t look anything like the sandwich shops and pizzerias I visit for the vast majority of the cheesesteaks I post about here. I’ve noticed it plenty of times while driving by – in part because it stands out from the crowd on busy Route 611 by having an unusually attractive exterior and not being part of one of the many shopping complexes that now crowd what was a fairly empty stretch of road when I was a young man. 

Its look has intrigued me for some years now, but my thinking until recently has always been that I’d like to try it some time for an Italian-accented seafood dinner with my wife. That changed in the past few weeks when a series of raves about their steaks started popping up in Facebook’s cheesesteak groups. 

On top of that, I’ve been due to have lunch with my oldest friend, John, who periodically joins me on blog-related food outings and also happens to live in Warrington. After seeing a fourth or fifth rave about Alessio’s steaks, I called him up and made plans for Tuesday. As usual, we arrived early to beat any lunch rush.

The lunch menu was a long one. The below photos don’t cover all of it. There was also an array of appetizers and salads. But I had my heart set on splitting both a regular steak and a cheesesteak stromboli and didn’t think we could handle any more than that. 

Alessio’s cheesesteaks come with American cheese and on a seeded roll by default. I also requested fried onions. For the stromboli, I inquired whether the sauce would be baked in with the meat and cheese or served on the side and was glad to learn it was the latter, which is my preference. 

John and I had the place to ourselves and were discussing old times when the food arrived. Both items couldn’t have been much more pleasing from an aesthetic standpoint.

There had to be close to a pound of chopped ribeye on the cheesesteak and it was very nicely seasoned. As was the case with steak I had last week at Stoli’s, there didn’t appear to be a lot of cheese on it at first glance. But once again, as I ate my way through the sandwich, I found it in nearly every bite – even more of it this time. In fact, if there had been that much Cooper Sharp, I may have thought it was a bit too much. But with the milder taste of American, it wasn’t an issue. 

The roll came lightly toasted, which I wasn’t thrilled about initially. I normally prefer a high quality and fresh roll to be untoasted – which is the same philosophy I have for bagels. But this one was only lightly toasted and the extra bit of crunch that gave the crust worked fairly well from a textural standpoint. 

Although the stromboli appeared nicely done, when I took a closer look and cut into it, I could see it was overly moist and mushy toward the center. I’ve complained about that with a couple other cheesesteak strombolis in past posts. It seems to be something that is difficult to avoid. 

The first piece I had was from the center and it was a bit of a mess, but it still tasted fantastic. 

After finishing that initial piece, I cut one of the ends off and found that to be much more texturally satisfying.

I still intend to return to Alessio’s for that seafood dinner with my wife – and possibly John and our other friends in that area for a group outing. But I’m glad I got to check out their cheesesteak in the meantime. It’s not quite up there with those that are in my top tier, but it should still comfortably find a place on the top 20 list I’ll be releasing in a couple months.