The Al De Palma story is fun, but it's generally agreed that the name hoagie came from the ship builders working on Hog Island who brought their lunch to work...a long roll and some meat, cheese, whatever. They would stuff the roll and eat it as a sandwich. This Al guy may have said that, but it's not where the name came from. And besides, why would you need to be a hog to eat meat/cheese/L&T on a long roll?
Philly Tastes
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Credit: Todd Coleman
Philadelphia has its immigrants to thank for its sandwiches. In the 1800s, the city's workers brought from Italy a taste for sandwiches on long bread, carrying them to the factories and dockside for lunch. The hoagie likely was named by former jazzman Al De Palma, who opened a deli in 1936, coining his wares after a comment he'd made years earlier while watching fellow musicians devour Italian sandwiches: "You had to be a hog" to eat one. Over the years, his "hoggies" became "hoagies."
The city's steak sandwich was invented by Pat Olivieri, founder of Pat's King of Steaks, in South Philly. Olivieri was a hot dog vendor who, tired of wieners one day in 1930, threw some meat scraps on his pushcart grill for lunch. The first cheese-steak, topped with provolone, is also a Pat's creation. The Italiano—meat, greens, and sharp provo-lone—is a more recent South Philly tradition. Shank's & Evelyn's (now Shank's Original Luncheonette), which opened in 1962, served one of the first Italianos, which was made with a chicken cutlet. The pork version came with a side of sautéed greens, which some customers requested on the roll.
The "combo," a marriage of hot dogs (and, later, hot sausages) and fish cakes, was the brainchild of Abe Levis, a Lithuanian Jew who opened a Philly franks shop in 1895. John Danze, of Johnny's Hots—located in Fishtown, the former locus of the city's shad fisheries—serves it with "pepper hash," a Pennsylvania Dutch cabbage-and-bell pepper relish that has long been a popular local condiment for fish.
