Pardon My Cheesesteak: Chipotle Cheesesteak Review
The newest culinary venture from Barstool Sports and the Pardon My Take podcast is Pardon My Cheesesteak. It’s a delivery and pickup cheesesteak restaurant that uses ghost kitchens and apps like DoorDash or Uber Eats to deliver cheesesteaks, loaded fries, and brownie bites to customers across the country. Their website boasts hundreds of locations.
Last time around, I reviewed PMC’s standard cheesesteak. It received a decent score, but nothing super impressive. I’ve adjusted my approach to see if anything changes. To reiterate, I might be the least picky person when it comes to cheesesteaks. I’m not from Philadelphia, so there’s at least an entire city of people who are probably far more qualified to rate this product than me. However, I’ve had enough cheesesteaks in my day such that I feel confident giving a review.
For this review, I am specifically looking at the chipotle cheesesteak. Pardon My Cheesesteak will be graded on four categories, each out of five points: Cost, Presentation, Steak, and Overall Taste.
Cost
This is the first thing you’ll see when looking to buy from Pardon My Cheesesteak. Any of their sandwiches start at $9.99, which isn’t bad, but that price can quickly balloon given delivery apps’ penchant for adding on a bunch of extra fees. Plus if you want the 12-inch sandwich, that’s going to double the cost. Depending on where you are located for delivery, it could be even more. I went and picked it up myself to cut the cost and because it was convenient at the time.
The base price is a little much, plus I have to dock some points because of the ubiquitous extra fees. I did go pick it up in person, but I feel like most people use delivery apps to get it taken to their house rather than to get it themselves.
Score: 3.25/5
Presentation
The packaging was fairly nondescript: plain brown bag with some Pardon My Cheesesteak stickers. About what you would expect from a ghost kitchen. The sandwich was well-wrapped in paper and they didn’t cheat on the portion size at all. This particular sandwich was not nearly as greasy as the first time I ordered. Part of that might be due to the fact that I got it from a different ghost kitchen (this one was in a Greene Turtle). I assumed it would vary some based on location and was correct. Based on my expectations, it’s getting a much higher score for presentation than last time.
Score: 4/5
Steak
Steak gets its own category because to me it’s the most important part of a cheesesteak. If the steak is bad, throw out the whole thing. And honestly, the steak on this thing was pretty good. Fairly typical. I’ve definitely had better, but I was expecting far worse than what I ended up with. A pleasant surprise here.
Score: 4/5
Overall Taste
The standard cheesesteak comes with steak, provolone cheese, cheddar cheese sauce, and onions. Full disclosure, I’m not a big onion guy and opted to order the sandwich without them. If that’s inauthentic to anyone, sorry. The chipotle cheesesteak adds chipotle sauce to the normal cheesesteak. And honestly, I really enjoyed this one. The chipotle sauce definitely elevated the whole thing, there was less grease to work around, and they didn’t overdo the cheddar cheese sauce. I’m not picky, but overall I was very satisfied with it.
Score: 4/5
Final Score
This followup experience with Pardon My Cheesesteak was far more positive than the first. My expectations were tempered from earlier and I was pretty surprised with my conclusions. Ordering from a different ghost kitchen, adding chipotle sauce, and picking it up in person were all factors that contributed to a higher score. Would I buy it again? At this point, yeah probably.
Score: 15.25/20 = 76.25/100 (!)
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