Eddie's Famous Cheesesteaks
 Akron, Ohio        Date of Visit  07/04/14           Facebook Page

Scouting for a spot to take pictures of Independence Day fireworks (turns out that may be nonexistent) we were tooling around downtown and got a bit peckish. We considered a return trip to Luigi’s (which we will do) but remembered a little stand we had passed a number of time proclaiming “famous” cheesesteaks.
 

Sandwiches From The Sidewalk
 

Eddie’s is sort of like a food truck without wheels. Attached to the outside of the bar on the side walk is an awning covering some tiny kitchen equipment with a few tables and chairs scattered alongside. There is a somewhat brusque young man handling both customer service and the grill. It seems they are trying to mimic the particular service at Pat’s King of Steaks in Philly but this seemed less entertaining to me.

We intended to order a couple of sandwiches and an order of fries. The sandwiches were no problem, the fries turned out to be a no-go. The menu says they are fresh cut monster fries, bubbled off in peanut oil, topped with kosher sea salt and available with all sorts of condimentary possibility. Not today. They are changing the oil in the fryer in the middle of the day. I saw the pot full of oil, it needed changed…badly. Why it’s not done at the end of the shift when everyone wants to go home, I can guess…but it left us without the thing that might have left us with a better impression of the place.
 

The sandwiches both turned out to be below average. The original cheesesteak was certainly large and had a fair amount of sliced steak inside. The steak required some seasoning but was pretty tender. The veggies were actually well done but the roll was a disappointment. There are Italian rolls and then there are Italian rolls…this lacked the flavor and chew that makes for the defining ingredient of a great sandwich. There was cheese but it didn’t bring much…especially salt…to the sandwich. This would never compare to Pat’s and was beat hands down by the one we tried from a food truck recently.

The second sandwich was a Buffalo chicken. The iconic dishes of two cities were both meagerly replicated today. The sandwich did employ Frank’s hot sauce for a bit of punch the but chicken was chewy, the veggies overwhelmed most of everything else and the roll remained the same.

Eddie’s wasn’t terrible but it doesn’t have much to be famous for…unless it’s the fries?