At a glance
- Cutlet: chicken breast pounded thin, breaded, fried until brittle
- Roll: a Philadelphia hoagie roll, crisp crust and soft crumb
- Cheese: sharp provolone, laid on while the cutlet is hot
- Greens: garlicky broccoli rabe or spinach, drained
- Cold dress: lettuce, tomato, raw onion and oil, offered at delis that build it that way
- Home: South Philadelphia deli counters
At Chickie's Italian Deli on Federal Street in South Philadelphia, the Chicken Italiano arrives as a breaded cutlet loaded with sharp provolone, and that pairing of fried breast and aged cheese anchors the Philadelphia chicken cutlet hoagie. The cheese goes on while the cutlet is still hot from the fryer, so it softens against the crust without ever running off it. Sharp provolone brings a salty, faintly sour sting at the back of the tongue, and against the mild chicken it does the seasoning work that mozzarella would leave undone. The sandwich asks for very little else to make its point: a hot cutlet, a blanket of cheese, and a roll long enough to take the whole piece without folding it.
The cutlet is built for the roll. A breast pounded to an even thickness is cooked through by the time its crumb coating turns deep gold, which keeps the meat juicy and the crust shatter-crisp, and a flat piece lies along the whole length of a hoagie roll. Shallow frying in hot oil gives off a steady crackle that goes quiet as the moisture leaves the coating, and cooks listen for that change. Cutlets stacked hot in foil steam themselves soft, so counters pull them onto a rack or straight into the roll. A cutlet that waits loses its crackle first and its crunch a few minutes later.
The usual green is broccoli rabe, sauteed in garlic and olive oil until it is tender and still bitter enough to sting a little. Laid over the cutlet and cheese, it sends up garlic steam that melts the provolone further, and its bitterness cuts the sweetness of fried chicken coating. Spinach fills the same slot at shops that prefer a milder leaf. The pairing comes straight from the city's roast pork sandwiches, where sharp provolone and greens are the standard dress, and it is the reason a cutlet there tastes like a South Philadelphia sandwich. Rabe that goes onto the roll wet drips into the bread and softens the bottom crust to paste, so it is drained first.
A hoagie roll gives this sandwich its sound and its first bite. The crust cracks loudly when bitten and gives way to a soft crumb that drinks up the garlic oil from the rabe and holds its shape down the length of the cutlet. Wrapped in paper and cut in half, the sandwich shows its layers at the cut: pale cheese, green leaves, the brown edge of the crust. On the first bite, hot from the fryer, the cheese stretches between the sandwich and the mouth, and the bitterness of the rabe shows up a moment after the salt of the provolone. Within a few minutes the paper turns translucent where the oil has soaked through.
Delis also build the cutlet cold and dressed, with shredded lettuce, tomato, raw onion and oregano, finished with oil, the way an Italian hoagie is put together. The cutlet then sits at room temperature, its crust gone from brittle to firm, and the oil and vinegar season it as they would cured meat. The hot rabe-and-provolone build and the cold dressed build use the same cutlet and the same roll, and a South Philadelphia counter will usually ask which one is wanted. Either way the sandwich is eaten at lunch, wrapped tight, with the cutlet's crust the one crisp thing in a soft, oily, generous load.
The cutlet in South Philadelphia
No record names the first Philadelphia deli to put a chicken cutlet on a hoagie roll. Cutlets were already Italian-American deli food, and South Philadelphia counters carry chicken cutlet sandwiches on almost every menu, and no founding shop or year is documented.
The dress has a better paper trail. Domenico Bucci opened a stand in 1930, now John's Roast Pork, and his grandson John is credited with adding sharp provolone and spinach to the roast pork sandwich in the 1970s. Competing shops later swapped the spinach for broccoli rabe. A cutlet carrying that same cheese and greens inherited a dress the neighborhood had already settled on.
In 2013 the Best of Philly sandwich award went to the Chicken Italiano at Chickie's Italian Deli, 1014 Federal Street, a chicken cutlet loaded with sharp provolone. That put a fried chicken cutlet in front of a citywide audience roughly four decades after sharp provolone first went onto John's roast pork, using the same cheese.