A Return Visit to One of Delco’s Best Steak Shops

It’s taken a very filling seven months to do it, but I’ve finally reached the goal I laid out in February of revisiting each of last year’s top ten cheesesteak shops along with the five honorable mentions in preparation for putting out a revised top 20 list this November. The last stop I had to make was at Delco’s Original Steaks & Hoagies, which was one of the honorable mentions. That happened Tuesday for an early lunch. 

Delco’s Original sits in a shopping complex near the busy intersection of US-1 and US-202 in Chadds Ford, PA, which is in western Delaware County. As is often the case due to my penchant for beating the lunch crowd, the place was empty when I arrived. 

In spite of the wide array of sandwiches on the menu, I went with the usual steak with Cooper Sharp cheese and fried onions and paid extra for a seeded roll from Sarcone’s Bakery – an option I never pass up. There were two sizes available and I wasn’t sure which to get until the guy who took my order told me the large is 18-inches and contains over a pound of meat. I opted for the small.

And yet there still appeared to be at least a pound of meat on there when it was dropped off at my table. It was easy to see why I titled my initial post on the steaks at Delco’s Original, “A Beast of a Sandwich.”

As I’ve said a number of times, that’s more meat than is necessary or even desirable for a steak. Yet such monsters are becoming increasingly common in the Philly region. 

Size aside, the meat was moist and nicely seasoned. As for the cheese, after reading a couple reports on Facebook that the grill chefs at Delco’s Original were no longer mixing it in with the meat, I was pleased to see that the Cooper Sharp did appear to be at least partially blended – though it wasn’t evenly distributed throughout. 

The highlight of the sandwich was the fantastic Sarcone’s roll, which had a wonderfully crispy crust and was soft without being too doughy within. 

It was an extremely tasty sandwich overall, but it would have been easier to appreciate it if the meat had been in better proportion to the roll. Having said that, it’s still arguably the best cheesesteak in Delaware County. 

Now that I’ve made it through all of the required re-visits, I can spend the last month-and-a-half before putting out my new best-of list trying a few more steaks that will be new to me in addition to one or two return visits to places I’m not sure about after my most recent experiences with them. 

In the meantime, I’ll be back in a week or so with something I haven’t posted in a while – a trip report. Writing those was initially one of the main reasons for starting this blog, but I’ve let it drift off in other directions.