Basically Philly cheese steak over fries.
The steak was free.
Cost per person was $2.44
In southern california, there is a dish you can get at mexican fast food places called “carne asada fries”. Back in the day, it would cost about $5, for one of those styrofoam containers full of fries, and then completely loaded with carne asada. You would get 1-3 friends together, pool your funds, walk to Albertos, buy a bad boy that looks practically like what you’ve got here, and destroy that thing sitting on the curb in the parking lot.
I didn’t need friends. I was eating 6000 calories a day back then. I’d eat one of those without any hesitation.
Favorite locations for that were Aiberto’s on University and 41st and Saguaro’s on 30th.
I was wayyyyyy too poor to be able to afford carne asada fries solo or daily. I had a hustle set up with gym socks jammed in vending machines to get scrounge enough money for food back then. $1 fish tacos, five rolled tacos, burgerking dollar menu. Just trying to get enough calories to go to waterpolo/ swimming practice.
how does the socks jammed in vending machines hustle work? I’m curious
Water polo swimming starving as well (early 2000s). Safeway 79 cent 2 liter cola, 7 dollar 18 inch combo sandwich (pre made, grab extra mayo and mustard on the way out) and 5$ hot and ready little Caesars was the daily intake.
Unfortunately it remained the daily intake long after I stopped swimming. But now I’m swimming again and I’m back to being less than twice the person I used to be. Looking at pictures of myself back then, I was unhealthy skinny. Then I got unhealthy fat. Now I’m working my way back down at a healthy rate. Gotta get there before my heart (or colon now I hear?) gets me.
I was 6’2” and 135 pounds. I gained 50 pounds in three years after turning 30. It felt awesome. Now I’m just over 200 working to maintain that. Any less and some health problems come back. Any more and new ones pop up. 200±5 is kinda my ideal zone.
Find your zone. Sometimes you need just three rolled tacos. Sometimes you need 10. Sometimes you need just three and a beer backer.
I didn’t have a car so my cost of living was very low.
I have been able to make a lot of -toes’s favorites but those rolled tacos are still on the to-do list. Gotta stew and shred the beef. Roll everything up. Freeze. Deep fry, make guacamole and then the hard part, that red pepper rind Cotija. I can’t get that here in Lesser Carolina.
A few months ago I got a craving for Rubio’s but it passed pretty fast. First time in more than two decades that craving hit.
Tacos Mexico was my favorite taqueria. I always found Alberto’s to be a bit on the drier side.
Albertos or any 'bertos taqueria is all about being cheap cheap cheap. I would never say they are the best but its a known quantity.
I moved to SoCal in '05 from rural Georgia. Alberto’s was my first experience with SoCal Mexican fast food. Got a carne asada burrito. There was some exotic flavor in there that I couldn’t place, but it complemented the meat so well it easily became one of the best things I’d ever eaten. Turns out the flavor was cilantro. The Mexican restaurants from back home in the Southeast catered so much to non-Mexican tastes that they pretty much didn’t use cilantro in anything. I’d been missing out my whole life up to that point! I’m now living in the PNW, and while the Mexican food here is actually pretty good, I miss Alberto’s dearly.
Yeah. Cilantro is almost entirely missing from the mex food in The South. I have to get all of my cilantro fix at home.
I think the Indian restaurants use more of it than the Mexican places.
I grew up on Roberto’s from the moment I had a job as a teen. I’ll be chasing those meals the rest of my life.
I feel forced to be a gatekeeper here.
Can you explain why?
Regional identity. If I see a carne asada burrito that is something other than beef, pico and guac I’m going to get irritated. If I see a California Burrito on a menu and it isn’t exactly the carne asada mentioned above with French fries in it I’m going to get irritated. If I see a 4+ inch diameter round meatloaf in a sea of marinara and pasta I’m going to say something. If I see chili with chocolate and cinnamon I’m gonna to say something.
There are things that are and there are things that are not. I have zero problems with someone telling me I made something non authentic. In this case I said it was “like” a Philly cheese steak. Not that it was one because I knew someone would get bent. And they have that right.
Bril response.
On top of that, I also suspect that people in my region are EASILY triggered upon this stuff after eating such unhealthy treats across our earlier lives (or perpetual lives, for some), combined with seeing the endless national recipe stream of ‘ooh look! here’s an authentic / classic food item you can make in your own home!’ posts, and every goldurn time they screw up multiple, fundamental aspects of a “PCS.”
Note: I’m trying to lower my doxxing profile, btw. Sorry for the vagueness upon this.
Whaddya think, @[email protected], make better sense, now…?
I got the regional identity part, but was wondering what the fault was with this particular dish.
So thanks for clearing that up!
Probably the lack of liquid cheese or provolone.
To be perfectly clear, a classic PCS starts with:
- thin-sliced rib-eye (or similar cut) fried and sliced further on a hot metal plate
- usually, sauteed onions
- a specific long Italian roll, which I don’t know the technical term for
- Cheez Whiz on top
And… that’s it! It’s a health-disaster of a meal, but my people love it. There are also a world of variations upon it, which would fatigue me to describe…
Thanks!
I understand that we each have our jobs and our duties.
Regional identity is pretty hard to shake, particularly when it goes right back to early childhood.
Free steak?
Sometimes people donate stuff. Sometimes boomer parents send corporate frozen meat boxes from the ads in Parade magazine or wherever they find them. I always make sure to disclose that for the price to make sense.
Excellent Spanish. Reminds me of my special ‘tacos con whatever the fuck is in el refrigerador’
One of my favorites. Along with Sopa de leftovers.
Necesita mas queso.
You call it a Philly cheese steak, but you dropped the wiz.
There are two slices of fake enough cheese under the toppings.
Yeah, that’s not even close to enough. If the cheese isn’t binding all the other toppings together, you don’t have enough cheese.
if your arteries don’t get a little thinner, you don’t have enough cheese. am I right?! can I get an amen for curdled animal milk!
Listen, they didn’t call that motherfucker a Philly Get Healthy Steak, dammit.
Sometimes unhealthy is self-care. Which is healthy.
