Cheese Steak Shop

(415)346-3712
1716 Divisadero St.
(between Sutter & Bush)
San Francisco, CA
(Western Addition district)
See their website for a dozen other Bay Area, Sacramento and Tahoe-corridor locations

Price: $
Rating: 7 (Rating & price key)
Last visit: 09/26/05

Tasty, greasy philly's in a no-frills fast food environment. Although I'm no expert on cheese steaks by any means, these tasted pretty darned good to me, and are definitely the best I've had in SF.

The menu consists mainly of simple variations on the philly cheese steak. Its two sides offer the same sandwiches, one with chicken, the other with steak. Sarah and I each ordered a 10" basic philly cheese steak ($5.69), thinking the 7" too small and the 15" much too large. For an additional $2.19/each, we added a small twister (curly) fries and 20-oz soda.

Despite the joint's resemblence to a fast food place, the food actually does not arrive particularly quickly, but that's because it's made to order, not ahead of time, and therefore this is a good thing, not a bad thing. When our order was up (they shout your name), we ploughed into our tasty baskets of very good, crispy curly fries and yummy chopped steak sandwich smothered in a cheese-like sauce, accompanied by spicy and not-spicy peppers. Mmmmm....

I wouldn't want to eat here too frequently for health's sake, but the food's tasty, and, while not super cheap, it's not particularly expensive either. If you're counting change, the 10" is the best value ($0.57/inch), while the 15" is the worst ($0.62/inch), with the 7" in between ($0.58/inch) :)