The Vegan Philly Cheesesteak Might Be Better Than the Real Thing

Chicago has deep dish pizza, New Orleans has po'boys, Boston has clam chowder, and Philadelphia has its cheesesteak. But Philly's restaurant scene also has a not-so-secret penchant for veganism which has led to the creation of the most marvellous gastronomic contradiction in terms: the vegan Philly cheesesteak.

Yes, you read me right. Philadelphia's very own filthy comfort food—thin sliced beefsteak loaded onto a long bread roll and served with oozy cheese—is in its very essence the antithesis of vegan eating. It's meat and cheese. You couldn't get a less herbivorous dish unless you were to switch the bread roll for a very very large sausage.

And yet, Nicole Marquis' dedication to making vegan food not just accessible, but also so entirely normal that it can be as gratuitously indulgent as any meat-based dish, led her to work out how to make the ultimate vegan version of the Philly classic to serve in her take-out store HipCityVeg.

"This is the city of cream cheese, Philly cheesesteaks, hot dogs, sports events, pretzels, and super down-to-earth meat-eating kind of food," Marquis tells me. "To think that Philadelphia would become one of the country's centres for vegan food is really crazy. But when I opened HipCityVeg four years ago I really saw demand."

She attributes the trend to a greater awareness of the impact our food has on our health and wellbeing.

"People were questioning what they were putting in their bodies and I knew that if I could put vegan food into a familiar format that made sense, so that everyone would know what to expect it to taste like and would find it craveable, people would want it."

The vegan Philadelphia cheesesteak was the ultimate test of this. It needed not just to look right, but to taste right, and the texture had to be spot on too.

"One thing about a cheesesteak is that it's super-rich because of the cheese," says Marquis.

I agree with her about this. Before I got involved with the vegan version, I felt it only right to have sampled a couple of examples of the original, meat-loaded type. I have an appetite, but I only ever managed to eat half before I felt entirely stuffed. Finish a whole one on a regular basis and you'd be well set for cardiac arrest a few years down the line. Melted, hot, and creamy between the meat, the cheese is the thing that makes this dish so particularly delicious.

"I knew I needed a creamy sauce component to it," agrees Marquis. "But I really haven't found a cheese that melts or tastes the same and I didn't want to mess it up, so I used an organic soy cream instead."

I've got to be honest, as a cheese lover, this sounded disappointing, but Marquis spent months developing her version to make sure it was exactly right, so I withhold judgement.

"I loaded it with mushrooms which gives it that meaty texture and then used a little organic soy grain protein together with sautéed garlic, onions, fresh thyme, and black pepper," she explains. "When you hit that with a little oil on the flat top it gets juicy, especially with the onions, and it's just the same thing as a Philly steak."

Again, I have to say I'm not fully convinced that soy grain protein and mushrooms with organic soy cream can actually taste the same as meat and cheese, but again, I bite my tongue and wait until I've actually tried the thing before passing comment.

"The way we chop it, its texture, and the way we handle it, is the same. We're really using the same flavour profiles as the meat components," she explains. "I always say meat on its own is not incredibly flavourful, it's how you marinade it or how you season it or what's with it. Vegetables—that's where the complex flavours are and so I go into creating a dish thinking that."

I want to believe her and there's only one way really to confirm or deny her assertion that a vegan Philly cheesesteak is as good as a non-vegan one. I have to try one.

Marquis started eating a vegan diet eight years ago, she tells me, after reading about the impact meat production has on the planet.

"Six hundred and sixty gallons of water is used to produce one pound of beef," she says. "The grain that is used to feed livestock could be used to feed 800 million starving people. That was something I couldn't ignore. When you have a choice about what you eat—and I'm grateful that I do, that I can decide, 'OK I'm going to be vegan'—then with that choice comes a responsibility. I decided I wasn't going to partake in that system and that I'd help to create a new one. It was like a spiritual awakening for me."

This admirable ethical stance means that she's probably not eaten an original Philly cheesesteak for the best part of a decade. I, on the other hand, with my slightly slacker morals, had one just two days earlier, so I feel adequately qualified through my "research" to determine how similar or not Marquis's alternative is.

The soy grain gluten, mushrooms, and onions hit the flat top with a sizzle, as promised. It looks weirdly like meat, the same shape and colour. The roll gets loaded with salad and ketchup and joins the filling on the flat top to warm it up. Out comes a squeezy of that unappealing sounding organic soy cream, the "cheese" to splurge onto the "steak," and then the whole lot is scooped up to complete the sandwich.

It looks exactly like a real Philly cheesesteak.

"No one wants to hear about factory farming when they're about to buy lunch," says Marquis. "I don't think you need to preach to effect change. If I can show people something flavoursome, accessible and easy, it's a win-win. If people think it's normal, it makes them feel good, and they realise it's actually good for the world as well, then they'll keep doing it. I just make it easy for them."

I take a bite. It's surprisingly good. I take another. The texture is right. The smell is right. It looks right. And another. It tastes … not entirely like meat, but not entirely unlike meat either. It's good, savoury, and hearty. I keep biting and chewing until I find that, unlike any of the other "normal" Philly cheesesteaks I've tried, I've finished the whole thing.

And yes, I feel good. If this is Marquis's mission in life, to get the carnivorous to enjoy something so quintessentially meaty in a non-meat form, then if this cheesesteak is anything to go by, I'm certain she'll succeed.