PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — Lots of people are gearing up for March Madness, including one local competition — sans basketball.
Jim Pappas, the cheesesteak guru behind the Philadelphia Cheesesteak Adventure, is leading the ultimate contest to name the best cheesesteak in the region.
Pappas was very particular when creating his March Cheesesteak Madness bracket system. After all, he is an expert — he has eaten roughly 1,000 cheesesteaks over the course of four years.
“So I came up with a five-category, 100-point scoring system,” he said. “That’s a 64-cheesesteak bracket-style tournament. We mirror the men’s basketball tournament. It’s 64 cheesesteaks broken into four regions.”
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Those regions are Philadelphia; Delaware County; New Jersey and the state of Delaware; and all the counties north and west of the city: Bucks, Berks, Chester and Montgomery.
There’s also a people’s bracket and a judge’s bracket.
“One bracket is just all online voting, so everybody can go online and then go round by round voting for their favorite cheesesteak,” said Pappas. “And then we actually have a judge’s bracket, where actually I take judges around and we go try the cheesesteaks, use my scoring system, grade them, and then we pick winners through the judge’s bracket.”
To listen to the full story of how Pappas got started with his Cheesesteak Adventure — and to hear some of his favorite cheesesteaks — listen to the KYW Newsradio original podcast What’s Cooking on the Audacy app or in the audio player below.