Offbeat Eats

As our regular readers know, we’re often (although not as often as pre-Pandemic) darting off to destinations both exotic and prosaic, and most of the time that means grabbing the occasional airport meal. As you can read in my many airport dining reviews, dining in airports is pretty much never ideal. You’re dealing with higher prices, service challenges, tight timelines, and often poor ambiance. But every once in a while I find a case where an airport managed to scare up an actually good option, such as our stop at Tony Luke’s at Philadelphia International Airport.

As just about everyone in the country is aware of, Philly is home to one of the nation’s most iconic sandwiches: the cheesesteak. A proper cheesesteak requires the right ingredients and preparation: the right roll (Amoroso’s), the right meat (real meat, not meat product) grilled and chopped, cheese (whiz or provolone), and toppings (onions and peppers), properly assembled on the roll. I love a good cheesesteak… done right, it’s a great sandwich, and the one that Philly’s most famous for. It’s also the second best sandwich to be had in Philly. Which leads to the obvious question: what’s the best sandwich in Philly? That would be the roast pork. A close cousin to the cheesesteak, the roast pork sandwich starts with the same bread (the well-loved Amoroso roll), but replaces the grilled cheese with copious slices of fresh-roasted pork loin. But there are several places that are well-known and well-regarded as purveyors of roast pork sandwiches, including John’s Roast Pork (a James Beard award winner), DiNic’s in the Reading Terminal, and Tony Luke’s (nestled under the highway by the Walt Whitman Bridge). So when our trip to Delaware started with our arrival in Philly, we decided to duck over to Tony Luke’s for an early lunch.