{"id":5119,"date":"2012-01-03T11:46:21","date_gmt":"2012-01-03T18:46:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/?p=5119"},"modified":"2018-02-06T16:55:46","modified_gmt":"2018-02-06T21:55:46","slug":"just-desserts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/just-desserts\/","title":{"rendered":"Just Desserts"},"content":{"rendered":"

Winterguide 2012<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>I read an article in an AirTran inflight magazine over the holidays and came out of it with the distinct impression that 21st-century boosters and marketeers in Pennsylvania are now crowing about having \u201cinvented\u201d the whoopie pie.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s official, they seemed to be saying. The Maine legislature, possibly acting on their claim, fell short of proclaiming the whoopie as our state dessert, instead settling for calling it our Maine \u201cstate treat.\u201d<\/p>\n

For their own purposes, the Pennsylvanians seemed to be glossing over the real reason this happened in Augusta: that our delicious Maine blueberry pie was first in line for state dessert.<\/p>\n

Why all this spiking of the ball, guys? It\u2019s fine if you want to make your own whoopie pies, but why tread on ours?<\/p>\n

Which is why I\u2019ve decided to reveal to the world that it was really Maine who invented the Philly cheesesteak sandwich.<\/p>\n

The conventional citation, per Wikipedia, is that \u201cPhiladelphians Pat and Harry Olivieri are often credited with inventing the sandwich by serving chopped steak on hoagie rolls in the early 1930s. They began selling this variation of steak sandwiches at their hot dog stand near south Philadelphia\u2019s Italian Market. They became so popular that Pat opened up his own restaurant which still operates today as Pat\u2019s King of Steaks. The sandwich was originally prepared without cheese; Olivieri claims provolone cheese was first added by Joe \u201cCocky Joe\u201d Lorenza, a manager at the Ridge Avenue location.\u201d<\/p>\n

Since the original Philly cheesesteak didn\u2019t even have<\/em> cheese (way to go, Mensas), and since \u201cthe early 1930s\u201d date depends entirely on a hoagie roll with nothing beyond chopped steak, Maine has only to prove that we served steak sandwiches in Italian sandwich rolls before the early 1930s to win the claim.<\/p>\n

Which is easy to do.<\/p>\n

The Amato\u2019s chain sprang up on India Street in Portland in 1902, featuring its world-famous Italian sandwich rolls. According to the Amato\u2019s site, \u201cTheodore Roosevelt was in the White House, the Model T Ford was still six years in the future and on the Portland waterfront a young Italian immigrant named Giovanni Amato began selling fresh baked rolls filled with meat, cheese and fresh vegetables to his fellow countrymen working the docks.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s okay to do a little dance (or even whoop), Mainers. Cheez whiz, guys, \u201cyour\u201d Philly cheesesteak sandwich was still 30 years away!<\/p>\n

Anyone familiar with the Italian sandwich (a far greater invention) has seen his or her friends ruin perfectly wonderful Italians with the caveat, \u201cHold the onions and pickles,\u201d \u201cHold the oil,\u201d or \u201cSubstitute the ham with steak.\u201d There are so many kinds of love. So don\u2019t you think one of us simply ordered an unvarnished steak sandwich in an Italian roll before 1932?<\/p>\n

\u201cWe sell a ton<\/em> of steak and cheese,\u201d says Karen Sinclair of the India Street Amato\u2019s. \u201cAlways have.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yo, Adrian, this practice started in 1902, just as surely as the Patriots beat the Steelers in the AFC championship and then ripped the Eagles two weeks later to win Super Bowl 2005. Your memory\u2019s probably a little fuzzy about that, too, right, Pennsylvania?<\/p>\n

\"Colin<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Winterguide 2012 I read an article in an AirTran inflight magazine over the holidays and came out of it with the distinct impression that 21st-century boosters and marketeers in Pennsylvania are now crowing about having \u201cinvented\u201d the whoopie pie. It\u2019s official, they seemed to be saying. The Maine legislature, possibly acting on their claim, fell […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":247,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[40],"class_list":["post-5119","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-editor","tag-winterguide-2012"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5119","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5119"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5119\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14483,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5119\/revisions\/14483"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/247"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5119"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5119"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5119"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}