The cheesesteak project

When Josh Brawer announced to his parents what he and three friends were planning for their senior project at Lower Merion High School, the reaction was skeptical.

"C'mon," said Josh's father, David. "You're going to go around eating cheesesteaks for a month? You've got to be kidding me."

To David Brawer, the projects tended to divide the high school seniors into two groups. There were the kids who'd take the month off before graduation to do something socially active, such as work for a charity or a political campaign. And there were the others, who'd do nothing but hang out at the old man's office.

In other words, the do-gooders and the slackers.

Josh's cheesesteak adventure sounded - at least in the beginning - suspiciously as if he'd be joining the ranks of the latter. It sounded like a scam.

But it didn't seem silly to me when I was asked to mentor this project. Josh and his classmates Andy Shore, Jeffrey Steinberg and Tommy Conry would become my eating team.

After all, they were trying to answer one of the great culinary questions of our time: Who makes the best cheesesteak?

Talk about ambition. No food has defined our region more than this double-fisted roll of gusto. Nothing cuts across class lines, or bonds the generations with more unifying power, than a steaming-hot steak "wid" or "widout." (That's wid onions, if you have to ask.) The topic is an endless obsession, from gym locker rooms to the pages of the local media to Steinberg's car every time he and his buddies headed out of school for yet another lunch-period steak adventure.

Which is the best? Settling this question (at least once, though probably not for all) is a matter of regional preoccupation and a rite of gastronomic closure for these four friends about to leave for college. But it wouldn't be easy. Before it was over, the journey would take us more than 110 miles, through two states, 23 steakeries, 65-plus sandwiches and countless hours of challenging digestion.

In four days.

 Read "How They Scored," with the final rankings by the Cheesesteak Project

Ever since the first time my dad took me to Geno's, we have shared an incredible bond. During the car ride home, we began to argue over what really made the steak. I believed that it was the Whiz, while he claimed that the Amoroso's roll was integral. Apparently, we were both wrong. -- Josh Brawer's cheesesteak diary

The anatomy of a cheesesteak would appear simple enough - roll, meat, cheese and toppings. But how would we know the merely good ones from greatness?

My new students were experienced in the ravenous joy of attacking a juicy sandwich. I could see that the moment we met:

Josh, the shy devotee of Classic Coke who loved to reminisce about his favorite cheesesteaks.

Jeff, the loquacious sophisticate, who had honed his palate during family dinners at the Palm.

Andy, who wasn't going to let the cast on his arm from a basketball mishap get between him and a sandwich.

Tommy, the meticulous note-taker and future plastics engineer.

Four wide-eyed 18-year-old cheesesteakaholics.

But they hesitated a moment when I informed them we would not be visiting a single steak shop that day, but several. Maybe even 20 if they could keep up. They were in the big leagues now. Their senior project was serious business. And it demanded a brief primer in the science of cheesesteak scrutiny.

There is the meat itself, I told them. It can range from rib-eye to top round to, yes, even beef knuckle (gulp!?). But most important, how it is cooked? Look at the color of the meat before it hits the griddle. Is it as faded as an unripe tomato, drained of its flavorful juices? Or does it have a fresh crimson blush, marbled with the lacy white lines of fat that will baste it?

Is the griddle a glorified factory, lined with a tall berm of precooked steaming meat? Or is each sandwich cooked to order, seared to a caramelized brown around the edges and placed on a roll still dripping its natural essence? Is it shredded to a hamburger fineness (a method I always find dry), or is the thinly sliced meat left largely intact? Is the meat seasoned?

This, we decided, was key. But there was so much more. The crusty rolls versus the soft ones. Whether the onions were fried to a sweet golden brown. The girth of the sandwich (for which we were armed with a ruler) mattered. So did the quality of the cheese (was it real Cheez Whiz, or imitation?) The fire of the chiles and sauces on the condiment bar counted for extra points. As did an authentic level of atty-tude at the cashier's window.

Ultimately, we judged each restaurant on three sandwiches: a traditional steak with Whiz or American cheese, a specialty steak, and a chicken cheesesteak.

The variations we found were numbing. In fact, Josh Brawer returned home from our forays so bursting with nuances of the day's investigations that his father - awakening to our project's critical merit – soon wrote me to address the "great chasm" between him and his son.