English? We don' need no steeking English
Far be in from me to beat a dead horse, which is a particularly indelicate expression to use when discussing the origins of cheesesteaks, but I would like to remind America that the language of Philadelphia steak sandwich establishments has never been recognizable as standard English. By tradition and circumstance what passes for common usage among denizens of 24-hour cheesesteak shops falls somewhere between what linguists would call colloquial, slang, pidgin and Esperanto, the universal language of "It's four-in-the-morning. I'm drunk and hungry and freezing. Feed me." Hence was born the compact, incomprehensible but instantly understood order issued between chattering teeth, "Cheez wit." Soon this order was countered with the question, "Watches wan' widdat?" which cheesesteakophiles understood to be a choice between Coke, Pepsi or Sprite.
South Philly steak shop icon Joe Vento's achievement of 15 minutes of patriotic fame or xenophobic infamy is based on the bumper sticker message in the window of his sparkling glass, gleaming stainless steel and towering neon landmark, Geno's, at Ninth Street and Passyunk Avenue. "This is America. When ordering please speak English." reads the sign in the front window, which I will admit upon first reading is a bit shocking. I don't think I've ever seen the word "please" on a sign in a South Philly steak sandwich shop, which as a subspecies of eateries that inspired a cartoon in the New Yorker featuring a restaurant with the name, "Eat 'n' Pay 'n' Get OUT!"
By any standards of jingoism and intolerance, "Please speak English" is a long way from "America: Love it or Leave It." And yet Joe Vento's understated display of orneriness has netted him national exposure on network news, unrelenting coverage in the local news media, sober appeals to play nice and not embarrass Philadelphia by City Council members, plus guarded warnings of possible actionable wrong doing by the city and state Human Relations Commissions. The irony of all this is that in the great South Philly cheesesteak wars being waged by the cattercornered competitors at Ninth and Passyunk, Joe Vento's operation has been demonstratebly foreigner friendly, or perhaps more accurately, non-cheesesteak-speaking friendly, than "the guy across the street," which is Ventoese for Pat's Steaks, the third-generation family-owned business that "invented" the steak sandwich during the Great Depression.
For years there has been a detailed sign next the service window at Pat's instructing customers on the proper way to order. And if a customer should arrive at the window unsure of what to say or pause too long before deciding, the sign orders them to "go to the back of the line and start over." Years ago a non-cheesesteak speaking friend of mine from Indiana was waiting in line to enjoy his first Pat's cheesesteak. One by one all the people in front of him in line kept saying, "cheese with" or "cheese without" or "two cheese with." When it was my bewildered friend's turn, the clueless Hoosier asked innocently, "What's with?" At that the guy taking the orders behind the window turned to the cooks with the spatulas working the grill. "Hey FELLAS! We got one!" he said. Soon there were three faces staring at my English-speaking friend from the tiny window, shouting in unison, "With ((italics)) Onions, ((end italics)) STOOPID!" Thank God he wasn't French.
There would have been an international incident.
