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On a Friday afternoon, Ninth Street and Passyunk Avenue, the tip of the triangle where Pat’s Steaks stands, is crowded with cheesesteak-eaters of all kinds. First-timers chat excitedly, explaining to each other "the rules" ("We’ve got to order it the right way, or they’ll kick us out!") while locals fill the long lines, hoping to cure their cravings once more.
At a red bench under the historical landmark sign sits author Carolyn Wyman, wearing a cheesesteak-themed T-shirt and holding her latest literary effort, "The Great Philly Cheesesteak Book." The 178 pages, complete with color photos of neighborhood landmarks, has made her realize just how fortunate she and other residents are.
"South Philadelphians should take a tremendous amount of pride that they’re the cradle of cheesesteak culture," the 53-year-old author said, noting the sandwich has managed to infiltrate the entire food market, including the menus of franchises such as Subway and Quiznos. "The fact that this is where it all started is, I think, really neat. We’re just really lucky to be where it’s made the right way."
Though Wyman lives on the 1800 block of South 12th Street — within walking distance from what many consider the Cheesesteak Capital of the World — the Rhode Island-born foodie grew up too far away to smell what she now inhales daily. Her family ate Steak-umms from the box, but Wyman was never short on her love of quality foods.
"Rhode Island is a lot like Philly in a way," she said, explaining the state is rich in working-class fare stemming from various ethnic groups.
Determined to feed their children first-class eats, Wyman said father James and mother Viola, who still reside in Rhode Island, would take her and her two older brothers 30 minutes just to buy corn from a one-legged man who sold ears off the back of his truck.
"How many families would drive a half-hour?," she asked rhetorically of the trek for corn. "There was a very high value in our family for food, not gourmet food, but just food."
In fact, Wyman has a soft spot for what she calls "low-brow" foods. Her first book in 1993, "I’m a Spam Fan: America’s Best Loved Foods," focused on the backstories of 100 typical grocery items, including one of Wyman’s college go-to foods — and the book’s namesake — Spam.
"I was infamous for eating TV dinners, cookies and doughnuts," Wyman said of her habits at Brown University, where she graduated in ’78 with a degree in English. "All these other kids were vegetarians and they were always looking down on what I was eating."
In fact, a plate of vegetables takes a backseat to the writer’s favorite food — a gooey chocolate-chip cookie.
"My in-laws are now eating low-fat ice cream and [food] with low cholesterol," Wyman said. "My parents are, like, Ben & Jerry’s every night. Hey, if that’s going to get me to 85, I’m with it!"
Sharing her mother’s sweet tooth, Wyman credits time spent on the phone with her mom while at Brown for inspiring her nationally syndicated column, "Supermarket Sampler," which offers dual perspectives — Bonnie Tandy Leblang serves as the nutritional voice, while Wyman sounds off as the dedicated junk-foodie — of the what is lining grocery-store shelves and freezers.
"When I was in college, I would call home to talk and she wouldn’t just say, ‘how is school going?’" Wyman said. "She would always say, ‘Oh, did you see the new Chocolate Cool Whip?’ It made me think, there’s a lot of people who care about this too."
In ’87, Wyman and Leblang teamed up to write a few samples of the column until it was sold to Universal Press Syndicate. The two already worked side-by-side at the daily newspaper, the New Haven Register, where Wyman began just a year after graduating from Brown.
Though she discussed new grocery products with her mother, among other things, her father, a former executive editor at The Providence Journal, was a useful resource in learning the technical aspects of journalism.
Beginning as a features writer for the Register, Wyman filled in as a food editor when Leblang, the paper’s food writer, left. Wyman found her love of a tasty meal not only filled her stomach, but her journalistic niche, as well.
The multifaceted writer juggled her career at the Register with her trek into authorship. Wyman’s youth-friendly book, "Ella Fitzgerald: Jazz Singer Supreme" (music is another passion) also was released in ’93. Four years later, the author took her taste buds to the kitchen, writing a cookbook bursting with offbeat recipes. Her bestseller, "Spam: A Biography: The Amazing True Story of America’s ‘Miracle Meat!,’" was published in ’99.
Leaving the Register after more than 15 years, she took a year off to focus on creating 2001’s "Jell-O: A Biography." Itching to relocate, Wyman and her husband of "a lucky 13" years, Philip Blumenkrantz, left New Haven, Conn., for Philadelphia, renting an apartment near Rittenhouse Square.
Though the couple enjoyed the city, Wyman was pleased to leave the "impersonable confines" of her Center City space for South Philly, where she said each street possesses its own quirky charms.
"If you want to live in a city, it’s because you like people and South Philly is a great place for that," Wyman said, adding there are more people on her block than there were in her entire neighborhood in New Haven. "Part of the reason it’s so appealing here is because of the history. On my street, my neighbor two doors over was born across the street and can tell me everyone that’s lived in my house and even everything that’s going on now."
Wyman has only lived in the area for three years, but has noticed a few subtle, hipster-like changes.
"I don’t want to see the tailors and the dry cleaners and the little grocery stores go out of business just so we can have a scooter shop," Wyman said, later joking even Brown became more hipster after she left because "they were probably waiting for me to leave."
Philadelphia has opened up new channels of inspiration for the author. She has traded road lanes for bicycle lanes, pedaling around the city and to work at weekly newspaper City Paper, where she is as an assistant copy editor. Even traveling on two wheels contributed to Wyman’s eight months of work on "Cheesesteak," which came out in June and for which she sampled at least 50 sandwiches from across the Delaware Valley.
"When I first moved in, I would come by [Ninth and Passyunk] and I would smell the cheesesteaks and that to me was like my new environment," she said. "I didn’t smell meat. I didn’t smell onions. I didn’t smell cheese. I smelled cheesesteaks. It all came together.
"Then I’d get down to Third Street and I’d pass a cart, and smell it again. A cheesesteak is not all these separate ingredients, but it’s all these things that come together."
