Shaved beef from Joe’s Meat Market in Glenside has enabled Wyncote resident John Raisch to elevate the cheesesteak palates of his Maryland in-laws. Stephanie Farr reported how in The Philadelphia Inquirer.

Raisch was already steeped in the regional lore of cheesesteaks, having both enjoyed and cooked them: He spent his high-school and college years cranking out the gooey delicacies at a Fox Chase pizzeria.

“At that time, [the shop in which I worked] owned the market for cheesesteaks,” he said. “We’d make thousands … on a Friday or a Saturday night.”

Raisch’s Maryland in-laws visited every Christmas.

His mother-in-law, familiar with the delicacy but not its nomenclature, once asked Raisch for a “steak and cheese.”

“That phrasing drove me nuts,” he remembered.

“One year … I decided from then on we would always [serve] cheesesteaks when they were in town.”

Rather than buy them, Raisch crafted them at home using Joe’s Meat Market beef, and 15 years later, he’s still at it.

“When we talk of me retiring someday, I say I will either be slicing lunch meat in the Sea Isle City ACME, or I’ll be back behind the grill making cheesesteaks where it all started,” Raisch said.

Additional familial cheesesteak tales are at The Philadelphia Inquirer.

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