(Roughly) Daily

Kunwar Khuldune Shahid explains how immigration patterns and global politics — plus a bit of serendipity — intertwined to make Philadelphia’s iconic sandwich a hit in a 13-million-resident Pakistani megalopolis…

… [Chef Mazhar] Hussain has worked at some of the most high-profile restaurants in Lahore — Monal, Tuscany Courtyard, Chaayé Khana and Café Aylanto, among others — covering a wide range of cuisines. His experience at Philly’s Steak Sandwich, though, has been unique. It’s a smaller restaurant than those, he says, and the guests come from all walks of life. The one thing that connects them: “The steak sandwich is extremely popular with everyone.”

Philly’s Steak Sandwich sits on a small highway apart from Johar Town’s main food centers, atop a hair salon. The shop fights for customers with a biryani restaurant across the street and buzzes all evening with motorbikes and cars jammed into the cramped parking spaces. The cheese­steak is especially popular among nearby students, who can enjoy it for PKR 579, or a little over two bucks.

…

Lahore, Pakistan’s second-largest city and the capital of the historic Punjab region, is considered the country’s food hub (although citizens of Karachi loudly dispute that claim). Its location at the crossroads of the many empires to have ruled over the Indian subcontinent, from the Mughals to the British, has added multicultural layers to Lahori heritage and culture. This is reflected in the city’s food, which blends Persian and Afghan flavors, a combination we now deem synonymous with the cuisine of North India — which Lahore was an integral part of before the 1947 partition created what is today called Pakistan, in the northwestern part of the Indian subcontinent.

That Indic syncretism, which Lahore has oozed with for centuries, is today introducing a new cuisine to the city’s taste buds: Philadelphian. But while Philly’s Steak Sandwich might be the first to put our city’s renowned sandwich on local billboards, Lahore’s love-in with the cheesesteak is, in fact, decades old…

More fission than fusion: “The Amazing Story of How Philly Cheesesteaks Became Huge in Lahore, Pakistan,” from @khuldune in @PhiladelphiaMag.

*  “Montgomery Burns,” in The Simpsons

###

As we muse on migration, we might recall that it was on this date in 1959 that the St. Lawrence Seaway opened. A system of locks, canals, and channels in Canada and the United States, it permits oceangoing vessels to travel from the Atlantic Ocean to the Great Lakes of North America– as far inland as Duluth, Minnesota, at the western end of Lake Superior.  The Seaway handles 40–50 million tons of cargo annually, about 50% of of which travels to and from international ports in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.

source