Pat's and Geno's: Ordering as a Statement

This sharp corner has long fed people on the go: on both sides of the intersection, two snack bars operate, where a cheesesteak is assembled in a long roll from thin beef and fried onions. At one, the business grew from a hot-dog cart and a window cut into the wall of a building above a tavern, and in time it took over the entire building. A short ordering sequence hangs at both windows: first the cheese, then the onions. The orange counter holds one side of the intersection, the King of Steaks sign the other.

The orange counter is marked “Geno's.” Yet Joey Vento opened it. A person named Gino will appear in this story only five years later: his father will name his son after the snack bar already in business.

Joey grew up a few blocks from here and learned to prepare meat in his father's shop. They argued about how to run the business. Then his father was convicted of organizing a murder, the family lost its former business, and Joey himself decided to start over. In nineteen sixty-six, he borrowed two thousand dollars from his father-in-law and took over a space declared unfit for occupancy at the sharp corner of Ninth Street and Passyunk Avenue. According to the family story, by opening day he had two crates of meat, a few hot dogs, and six dollars in his pocket. Neighbors gave him six months.

Across the intersection, Pat's King of Steaks was already operating. Pat Olivieri, whose name remained on the sign, came from Italy and supported his younger brothers and sisters with two jobs: he assembled wooden sleds in a factory and sold hot dogs from a cart at this corner.

This is where the Olivieri family legend begins. In nineteen thirty, Pat grew tired of his own hot dogs and sent his eleven-year-old brother Harry to the butcher for cheap trimmings. They fried the meat with onions and put it in an Italian roll. A passing taxi driver asked to buy this lunch, so Pat split the sandwich in half. The taxi driver advised him to give up hot dogs and sell meat sandwiches. It is no longer possible to verify this scene exactly, and today's Oliveris themselves call it a legend. Its continuation is beyond doubt: the brothers began selling steak sandwiches right here.

Pat had no money for a space. The owner of the corner house let him use a kitchen above a tavern, on the condition that he pay once business got going. There came to be more sandwich customers than bar patrons. Then a window was cut through the ground-floor wall for handing out orders, and in time Pat took over the entire building. Cheese was added later; the original cheesesteak consisted of thinly sliced beef, onions, and a long roll.

By opening directly opposite, Joey Vento did not dispute the Oliveris' priority. He said Pat had invented the sandwich and that he intended to make it better. Geno's very location was a statement: the new vendor placed his window facing the window of the man who was already calling himself the king of steaks.

The name, too, grew out of rivalry. The sign “Joe's” was already taken by another snack bar. On the wall of the future establishment, Joey saw the name of the Gino's hamburger chain written there, changed one letter in it, and got “Geno's.” When Joey and his wife had a son in nineteen seventy-one, the order was repeated in reverse: the boy was named Gino after the shop. After his father's death, Gino Vento took over the business and explained that he could not close it—thirty families depended on that kitchen.

The media seized on the two counters' proximity in the early nineteen seventies. Visitors began to be asked: “Pat's or Geno's?” An Olivieri heir later called this promoted duel the best thing that had happened to both businesses. People came specifically to compare them and crossed the intersection twice in a single visit.

An instruction hangs at the windows, turning an order into a short password. First comes the cheese: provolone, American cheese, or Cheez Whiz sauce. Then the onions: “wit” if you want onions, “witout” if you do not. Above one window remains Pat Olivieri's name. Above the other is the name Joey Vento first gave the snack bar and then his own son. Between them fits the entire choice: cheese, onions, and which side of the intersection.