Meatheadz serving up ‘Jersey’ cheesesteaks
I don’t remember the website, but I do remember wanting to throw my laptop out the window. It was something like “15 Quintessential Philadelphia Foods” or some such nonsense and somewhere in the middle of the list was pork roll.
Pork roll. As a “Philadelphia” food. Man, just typing this now is aggravating me. Pork roll is about as Philadelphia as a cheesesteak is New Jersey.
{Insert ironic foreshadowing music.}
But what if I told you one of the best cheesesteaks is actually right here in New Jersey? What if I told you Meatheadz in Lawrence, sitting where Stewart’s used to be on the Brunswick Pike and open a year this April, might just lay claim to the perfect cheesesteak? Hmmm? Well? What would say then?
“The highest compliment we can get is someone saying it tastes authentic,” said co-owner Joe Weintraub, who runs the restaurant with his brother Jeff. “Because that’s what we set out to do. We wanted to open an authentic cheesesteak place in New Jersey. Everything fresh, nothing frozen.”
Mission accomplished, boys. First up, the steak: A halfpound of chopped rib-eye, cooked to order. That’s when it hits the grill - when you order it. Lightly seasoned, with a touch of clarified butter instead of sopping it in oil. The result? Steak, and lots of it, and zero grease. It’s on point.
The roll? Amoroso, delivered fresh daily. Just enough roll to hold the sandwich, lightly toasted, doesn’t fall apart, perfect.
And then there’s your choice of cheese, peppers, onions, mushrooms, what have you.
Listen: I’m not going to sit here and say it’s the best cheesesteak I ever had (although it probably is). But I will say this: It has the taste, feel, and heft of what an “authentic” cheesesteak should be. If history got all garbled up in a time-is-a-flat-circle kind of way, and these guys were born 100 years ago, the world would be referring to this sandwich as a “Jersey cheesesteak.”
So how did the Weintraub brothers end up here?
“It’s in our blood,” said Joe. “Our father had a deli in Edison when we were kids. As we got older, he sold it, but food has always been with us, and we both loved cheesesteaks. We’d travel for cheesesteaks. And we always thought it would be a good idea to bring something like this to New Jersey.”
Once that decision was made, they went on a fact-finding mission, which basically consisted of eating every cheesesteak in a 50mile radius.
“I still haven’t lost weight from the research,” Jeff noted.
They sourced their food. They had their plan. All they needed was a place. The brothers live in South Brunswick, so they started their search there. They went north, south, east and west. Nothing felt right.
Then their dad Richard - who you’ll sometimes find manning the grill - drove by and saw the space where Stewart’s once stood. The brothers came to look at it. It felt perfect.
First of all, there’s no “inside.” It’s outside. You’re either eating in your car or sitting in an as-yet unheated enclosure. It’s like 1957 exploded and dropped down in Lawrence. It has that kind of charm. It’s a throwback, and it’s the ideal space for Meatheadz. Not just because of what they serve, but how they serve it. It’s all fresh. Everything is homemade, except the hot dogs (Hebrew National). They do hamburgers, and they’re grinding the meat.
I’m telling you: Throwback. As to how they came up with the name? Simple. “Our dad used to call us meatheads all the time,” Joe noted.
This place is real deal. I can’t wait to see “cheesesteak” on a future list of quintessential New Jersey foods.