Republican vice presidential candidate and Senator JD Vance of Ohio may have received some strange looks in Philadelphia on Monday when he asked employees at Pat’s King of Steaks why they didn’t serve Swiss cheese on their sandwiches.
Vance, who was campaigning in Philadelphia, made a pilgrimage to the famous steak sandwich shop on Monday after a speech at a waste disposal facility. Pat’s is one of the most famous steak sandwich shops in the City of Brotherly Love, along with its rival Geno’s Steaks across the street in South Philly, and a frequent campaign stop for presidential candidates.
“I don’t like Swiss cheese either, but everyone says it’s an insult,” Vance asked at the Pat’s register. “Why do you hate Swiss cheese so much?” Both Pat’s and Geno’s serve steaks with only American cheese, provolone and Cheez Whiz.
“We don’t hate it, we just don’t use it. We usually use Cheez Whiz,” said a Pat’s employee who took the Ohio senator’s order.
“We thought it was funny,” Pat’s manager Sammy Garcia later told Philadelphia InquirerHe also told the newspaper that the Ohio senator had left a good tip.
Although it has become a ritual for presidential candidates to stop by Pat’s or Geno’s, doing so has also resulted in at least one major faux pas in the past. Vance was likely referring to Senator John Kerry’s infamous cheesesteak incident during the 2003 campaign – when the then-Massachusetts senator ordered his sandwich with Swiss cheese.
Some locals were outraged by Kerry’s faux pas. “Swiss cheese, as every local knows, is not an option,” wrote Craig LaBan, the Inquiry‘s restaurant critic in 2003. “The Massachusetts Democrat might as well have ordered cave-aged Appenzeller. But even when Kerry got a real cheesesteak sandwich, he made matters worse by gingerly nibbling at it as if it were toast.”
Senator John Kerry eats a steak sandwich at Pat’s in 2003.
William Thomas Cain
However, the staff at Pat’s told the local food critic that they wanted to create a Swiss cheese special for the Massachusetts Senator – but only if Kerry won the election.
Kerry won the Democratic nomination but lost the 2004 presidential election to incumbent former President George W. Bush. The former Massachusetts senator did, however, win in Pennsylvania.
