George's Lunch Truck

I'll never be a professional food writer. I have neither the qualifications, nor the talent in writing to ever make money doing this, and I'm okay with it. So while Sam Sifton can afford the luxury of being paid to shit all over fancy pants restaurants, I do not. As a direct result of this misfortune, when I go out to eat, my first priority falls on the wallet, with taste being secondary (sad... I know). Luckily, I like food... in all forms. Yes, expensive restaurants certainly have their niche in my book, but like Danny, fast food and generally boring stuff is fine with me too. Shit, I'm a grad student, and like I said, I don't get paid to eat.

This is where George's fits in. If you're looking for the holy grail of cheesesteaks, burgers, or sandwiches... feel free to stop reading now. Actually, if you're even looking for an above average meal, you can probably skip this post. Nope, I'm gonna dedicate this one to all the broke ass students who are sick of dining halls. George's is a food truck that specializes in American cuisine, which apparently just means sandwiches and burgers, for prices that keep my checking account adequately full. Sort of. For example... for just $3.75, you can get a bacon double cheeseburger (see above). Like I said, it's not spectacular. In fact, calling it good would probably be a lie. If I had to find a comparable, it's like a better version of a whopper with bacon, which isn't all that awful. The meat is of the frozen sort, and then cooked through and through, but if we consider the fact that it's only $3.75... it's looking pretty decent now no?



For the same $3.75 you could also get the cheesesteak. Melted white American cheese, a generic 10" hoagie roll, onions, and frozen chopped steak. The recurring theme here is that it's not spectacular, but it's cheap as hell. In a straight comparison of food, Steak Queen kicks George's metaphoric ass, but at 75% of the price, it's acceptable on days I don't feel like walking that far. Basically, with my limited food budget in mind, even though George's isn't a culinary mecca of burgers and cheesesteaks, it's fine by me.
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General Tso's chicken cheesesteak

Many a moons ago, some guy... whose culinary acumen puts all the iron chefs' combined to shame, made what might be the greatest single sandwich in existence. The General Tso's chicken cheesesteak. By combining a plain cheesesteak, which by itself is already fantastic, with General Tso's chicken, perhaps the single worthwhile product of the bastardization of Chinese food, he created a love child of heartburn and sinful deliciousness. It is indeed a sandwich of pure magnificence. But for some reason, it never caught on... for shame. Inspired by his innovation and boldness (and possibly by overwhelming boredom), I set out to replicate his experiment, to see if it actually tasted good... in real life, and not just in theory.



General Tso's chicken sourced from Kim's Oriental. I debated going with grandfather chicken (from which I've been told by several people has a thinner sauce, but tastes pretty much the same), but I figured in the interest of amplifying the flavor, that more sauce would be better. Their General Tso's probably isn't anything spectacular, but amongst the food trucks, it pretty much kicks ass. Plus it's $4. I'm a graduate student... I'm not made of money.



At the very least, I one-upped the original creation by using an actual Philly cheesesteak from Philly. On the downside, it was really cold outside that day, so I got lazy. Instead of going to one of the better cheesesteak trucks (like Steak Queen), I went cheap with one from George's Lunch Truck. It's $3.75... so the total cost of even a failed experiment would come in under $8. I wasn't entirely listening when I ordered, so I ended up asking for ketchup on it. Some would consider that to be sinning. Oh wells, I'm Chinese, give me a break.



... and then it happened. George's cheesesteaks are actually filled pretty well, so there was a fair bit of finagling (I was surprised spell check told me this was a real word) involved to make everything fit. The steak had to be ever so delicately compressed to submission, before I ladled out a full serving of chicken into an already obese sub roll. Getting it to stay in this position was harder than telling a kid with ADD to count marbles. Forreals.



Was it good though? I mean, asking me is kind of pointless. General Tso's chicken is like a drug to me. If it were in some way possible to hook an IV of the sauce into my blood and not kill me, I would probably do it. Then there's cheesesteaks... which are just carbs + cheese + beef. If you think about it, they're basically cheeseburgers in a different form, and oh god I love cheeseburgers. When you add them together, upon contact it's like the Wonder Twins except in the form of... gluttony and being fat. The sandwich is greasy, and every description of a plain steak sandwich is still applicable. The chicken adds a secondary element of surprise, supplementing the oozing cheese with sporadic crunches of fried crust. On top of that, the flavor profile becomes a symphony of savory, sweet, and tangy (possibly from the ketchup...) tastes. As disgusting and overwhelming as the combination sounds, I assure you this sandwich is sublime, and arguably life changing. By which I mean, if you eat it too much, you'll probably get heart disease. Best $7.75 I've spent in a long time.
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Jimmy's Sister (Pyramid Pizza)

Some things I recently learned about food carts after going to the row at Drexel: there are actually two Gigi's Caribbean carts, there are two George's Lunch trucks, and you can get sandwiches filled with mozzarella sticks, chicken fingers, fries, and chopped cheesesteak. Love. Clearly ripping off the idea created by the Rutger's 'Grease Trucks,' one of the carts, called Pyramid Pizza, has a full menu of sandwiches in which he puts things that are bad for you together inside of bread (all coming in at under $5). What a guy... he's out to kill me, and at a reasonable price too!

Instead of following the regular naming convention of 'Fat + name' he decides to make his creations part of a family. Of course you have the father, the 'Big Fat Jimmy,' but then you also get the rest of his dysfunctional family... Jimmy's Sister, Jimmy's Wife, Jimmy's Brother, and probably a few more relatives I'm forgetting.



My choice was obvious. Jimmy's Sister looked easy... too easy. She also had the most to offer in the family. A beautiful 10" hoagie filled with all of the above ingredients, she was the crown jewel of the menu. At $4, you get a sandwich packed full of artery clogging components. Yes, the mozzarella sticks, the chicken fingers, the french fries, and the chopped steak are all reheated from the frozen variety, and it's true the cheese is probably not of the finest quality, but that's to be expected. This thing isn't supposed to be good for you, it's just supposed to make you feel good (and then bad).



Arrrrgggghhhhh~. This is the sound my heart makes when I shove bite after bite of trans-fats down the throat. It's actually curiously interesting... this sandwich is nothing really special, but once that first bite of melted cheese, marinara, fried chicken tenders, and cheesesteak hits your taste buds, you can't help but continue wolfing down the remainder. It's like you're mind is programmed to think 'this is bad for me... it must be delicious,' completely disregarding your personal health in the process.



To be honest, I don't really remember too many distinct flavors in this sandwich. Everything just kind of melds together to form a homogeneous taste profile in your mouth. If you made me describe it in 3 words or less... I would probably say it tastes like 'fried,' 'cheese,' and 'fatty.' Would I say it's one of the best sandwiches I've ever had? Probably not. Would I say that it's fucking awesome and deserves to be tried by anyone who's not a health nut? Hell yes.
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