Is Angelo’s overrated? Their fast expansion puts the cheesesteak king in peril

When Angelo’s Pizzeria opened in South Philly six years ago, it didn’t just elevate the city’s cheesesteak standards — it reshaped them in its own image. Gone were the stale rolls, shredded meat, and molten flows of watery Whiz.

Under the purview of owner Danny DiGiampietro, Angelo’s introduced crusty, house-baked rolls. DiGiampietro grilled seasoned rib eye right up to the chewy line without crossing it, merging Cooper Sharp and beef at the optimum melting point. A new school of cheesesteak emerged.

Since 2019, reviews from the likes of Barstool’s Dave Portnoy and Somebody Feed Phil’s Phil Rosenthal have spread word of the shop’s high-quality operation nationwide, abetted by hype from actor Bradley Cooper and a bevy of media outlets (this one included). Its renown has prompted wave after wave of customers to show up to the corner of Ninth and Fitzwater five days a week. The line there has become a raucous scene, with cheesesteak hunters happy to wait more than an hour just to place an order and wait another 20- or 40-plus minutes for the food.

The solution to the seemingly bottomless demand for DiGiampietro’s steaks has been to grow the supply: His empire now extends, or soon will, to Conshohocken, South Jersey, Delaware, UberEats, Reading Terminal Market, and New York City.

But DiGiampietro, a known perfectionist, can’t be everywhere at once.

A visit to the Terminal-based Uncle Gus’ spinoff (a partnership with Joe Nicolosi of DiNic’s Roast Pork and Dave Braunstein of Pearl’s Oyster Bar) provided an uneven experience this past spring, when I sampled a disappointing set of sandwiches. I expected a long-rolled reminder of life’s redeeming qualities, and instead got … something else. While the rolls were expertly baked, they were both filled with a wad of dry beef strings glued together with gobs of stubborn fat.

It got me wondering if Angelo’s had grown too fast, too soon, and too far to maintain the standard of cheesesteak excellence that they set for the rest of the city.

On an April trip to Angelo’s Ninth Street location, I had a similarly subpar encounter. The rib eye in the cheesesteak was haphazardly chopped and extremely dry. There was more salt in the Whiz than on the meat. The signature crusty bread — usually up to handling the mound of toppings — was coming apart under the weight of the poorly cooked beef.

I ordered multiple sandwiches, with various cheeses and sauce combinations, and the best bite I had on that visit was the pizza steak, with the blend of meat, sauce, and cheese melding into what can only be described as a cheesesteak-meatball sub hybrid. The sauce smoothed over the dryness of the meat and balanced it out with a thick twist of mozzarella.

I went back to try again in May. Maybe it was just an off day? But I was still disappointed. The major issue this time was the house-baked roll. Famed for its crustiness, which everyone is copying, this bread was uncharacteristically underbaked. It got soggy — fast. It buckled under the weight of overstuffed meat, which was once again on the drier side. (The Cooper Sharp, however, was perfectly melted into the meat this time.)

When I told DiGiampietro about these experiences recently, he said, “It breaks my heart.”

DiGiampietro’s original shop, which he opened in Haddonfield in 2013, won regional recognition, but its cult following didn’t hold a spatula to the national rep Angelo’s claims today. Before moving to the Ninth Street location in 2019, he said, he “never, in my wildest dreams, expected any of this.”

“Have some things gotten through the cracks here and there? They sure have,” he said. “And they drive me crazy at night.”

According to the Philly-based “fatty foods biographer” Carolyn Wyman, who authored The Great Philly Cheesesteak Book in 2009, an exceptional steak relies on four core principles: a bakery-fresh roll, gooey cheese that doesn’t overwhelm the taste or soak the sandwich into submission, onions that aren’t caramelized into oblivion, and beef that actually tastes like beef and not just a pile of gristle.

It has to be more than a working-class sandwich. It has to be a symphony. It should coalesce into one glorious flavor, with each component equally balanced. One component should not be used to balance out weakness in another.

I figure the Angelo’s problem results from the pressures of serving a daily deluge of customers.

When I worked at a cheesesteak shop in college, the major pain points came with getting the meat off the grill. DiGiampietro knows well the perils of the flat-top.

“My biggest pet peeve is too much meat on the grill,” he conceded, “because now you’re not frying. You’re steaming it. And it’s a completely different steak.”

He tells his staff all the time: “People are going to wait. Make it worth their f’ing wait,” he said.

And let’s be fair to the cooks: That line can be intimidating.

“A lot of times my guys get too nervous,” he said, “and they see those tickets coming in, and they want to try and load up the grill, but there’s only so much we can do and how fast we can do it the right way.”

I have a ton of respect for DiGiampietro, for everything he’s built and for his dedication to his craft. He’s only human.

“It’s daunting,” he said. “I see a therapist, believe it or not. Just the pressure of the expectations can sometimes be very overwhelming.”

When word about Angelo’s got out in 2019, and endless lines continued to form, he got overwhelmed.

“I thought we’d be serving sandwiches and pizza to the neighborhood,” he said. “I did not see this.”

The Uber expansion in particular was a little harder than he anticipated, he said. “It’s been a challenge,” he said. “I am getting it under control.”

But if someone has a bad experience, he said he’ll own up to it and offer ways to make it right.

“We’re trying our best,” he said. “We’re not Michelin stars here. It’s pizza, cheesesteaks, and making bread. But we do it the best we can and as honestly as we can.”

I stopped by Angelo’s yesterday to see how things were going.

I picked up a few sandwiches, and there was a lot of good: The steaks weren’t overstuffed, and the rolls were ideally crusty on the outside and buttery soft on the inside. But the beef between the two sandwiches varied in how well it was cooked, and the ratio of cheese to meat was inconsistent.

The longer I ate one with Whiz the worse it became; the meat was a touch too tough. On the other hand, the cheesesteak with Cooper Sharp increasingly won me over with every bite — it lived up to the hype, and it’s exactly what people are waiting for. It was the epitome of the new-school cheesesteak Angelo’s made famous.

So it wasn’t a redemptive visit, per se, but it does show that Angelo’s has plenty of fight left in its grill. They’re still dedicated to getting it right. It’s just a matter of execution.

This last visit helped solidify my belief that DiGiampietro will get things back on track. He set his own standard, and Angelo’s made steaks in Philly better. A few missteps won’t change that.

Bells and birds help tell the city’s story, but it’s a sandwich that helps explain Philadelphians. How we evolved from farmers in the cradle of liberty to DoorDashers in a melting pot of orange whiz is informed and defined by the cheesesteak. Raising the Steaks is a weeklyish chronicle of this long-rolled reminder of life’s redeeming qualities.