ORIGIN
Brought home by a former football player.
A former football player's shop. Shinichi Hashimoto fell for the Philadelphia cheesesteak in the United States and brought it to Hatagaya — described in the press as "the real thing that keeps Americans coming back."
Note: the dish photo is AI-restaged from a real photograph of the shop’s dish.
The founder, Shinichi Hashimoto, is a former American-football player who fell for the Philadelphia cheesesteak in the United States. Unable to find the same thing back in Japan, he opened his own shop in Hatagaya. Thin beef and melting cheese off the griddle, pulled pork smoked for over ten hours — on a small counter along the Koshu-kaido, he has been grilling the real thing ever since.
「The balance of bread, meat and the saltiness of the cheese is what decides the flavour」
— Shinichi Hashimoto, founder — as quoted in Lightning / Dig-it
Smoked 10+ hours
The shop opened in Hatagaya in May 2018. In local press and Lightning magazine, the founder is described as having encountered the Philadelphia cheesesteak in the United States (accounts of exactly how differ between sources, so we do not state it as fact). His own words, quoted in Lightning: "the balance of bread, meat and the saltiness of the cheese is what decides the flavour." Dig-it magazine ran the headline "the real thing that keeps Americans coming back," and the shop's own UberEats copy calls it "endorsed by genuine American customers."
