Whenever people from out of town ask me if the best cheesesteak is from Pat’s or Geno’s, I usually slap them in the face as hard as I can. Mainly because I like to slap people, but also because I believe that if you come to Philly the two sandwiches you must try are the Roast Pork and the Chicken Cutlet Italian — a delicious chicken cutlet pounded flat, breaded, fried and served with sharp provolone and either broccoli rabe or spinach.

Today’s Throwdown will be a Chicken Cutlet Italian Sandwich battle between several worthy competitors:

• Shank’s – 901 S. Columbus Blvd
• Tony Luke’s – 39 East Oregon Ave
• Pastificio - 1528 Packer Ave
• Chickie’s Italian Deli – 1014 Federal St
• Cosmi’s – 1502 S. 8th St

Also, don’t go to Pat’s and Geno’s, go to John’s Roast Pork if you want the best cheeseteak in the city. But first try their roast pork — you can skip the line of people waiting for the grill.

In honor of Friday the 13th, we will be having our first ever PhoodAddict Friday Throwdown. Basically, it’s just an excuse to eat lots of food and tweet/blog about it. Since my office is the sweetest office in the world, we are going to get fried chicken from three places and do a very detailed, scientific study and assign a numerical value to their respective places in the fried chicken universe. To be clear, all three of these places are awesome in my book. This is just to determine who is the awesomest. The three places are:

Federal Donuts - The most hyped fried chicken in all of Philadelphia, and deservedly so. We are going to go with Chile Garlic and/or Honey Ginger.

Sammy Chon’s KTown BBQ – They just opened a Chinatown location and feature wings in Honey Sesame and Soy Garlic.

Gas Station Chicken – There aren’t many places to eat right near my office. It’s pretty much crap from the Ambu-lunch (an old ambulance turned into a lunch truck) or fried chicken from the gas station. When we preparing to move into our office last spring, Gas Station Chicken was a regular meal. It was surprisingly fresh and tasty, and we ate so much it made us sick and damaged our self esteem, which is the hallmark of many good foods.

FAQ’s:

Is this really fair? All three places are pretty different? I know, this is not really an apples to apples competition. And to be clear, you won’t go wrong getting chicken from any of these places. But come on, you’re reading a blog called PhoodAddict, did you really expect sound journalism or science?

I thought you said it would be very detailed, scientific study? I was being sarcastic, idiot. But there will be a survey, courtesy of the good folks at Survey Monkey. My office will complete the survey first, then I will open it up to my massive audience (Google Analytics says I had 3 absolute unique visitors yesterday!)

You should have included <name of fried chicken place> in the contest! We can only eat so much chicken, but if you have suggestions, tweet at me, son. Resurrection Ale House’s chicken is great, but they unfortunately don’t do takeout. Also, I’m not ashamed to say I enjoy Popeye’s, but one time I went to the one on Broad Street and a lady who was missing an eye was hanging out by the entrance. And she didn’t have an eye patch, it was just an open socket. I swear this is true. I am a fat guy who has a blog called “PhoodAddict” so I got chicken anyway, but it was still pretty disturbing.

Don’t you have a job? Don’t you do any work at your job?  Yes,  I have a job and everyone in my office works really hard. We also all really enjoy food, which is why group eating events like the Pizza Olympics and Wing Eating Contests (I ate 25 and finished second to last in my office) are a regular occurence.

I’ve decided that all of my posts are going to have Leslie Knope style headlines.

So I went to Ela on Saturday and it was fantastic! A few minor issues, but overall the food was awesome. Didn’t take any pictures, but Meal Ticket has a great spread if you want to see what the space and the dishes look like. The menu is a little confusing — it’s divided into First, Second, Third and Fourth bites. First and Second bites were appetizer sized portions and Thirds and Fourths larger. Our server recommended that we order three bites for a full meal. Honestly, portions were not that large, but everything was exquisite.

We started with the garlic pannacotta with shrimp, popcorn, asparagus, smoked roe and olive oil — delicious and unlike anything I’ve ever tried — and the hamachi, which was good but sadly did not include the horseradish granita I had heard about. For seconds, we had the crab banh cam and baby beets with brie, quince and cardamom. For thirds, we tried the duck breast over pretzel spaetzle and the scallop “noodles” — scallops somehow crafted into delicious noodle form. Again, delicious and unlike anything I’ve ever tried before. For dessert, we had hot chocolate chip cookie dough with vanilla semifreddo and banana and whipped pumpkin pie with pumpkin seed praline, candied ginger and figs, which both tasted as good as they sound.

Everything about the meal was great, though I did have a minor quibble: the dining area was loud and way too crowded. The space between our table and the next was so tight that our server’s ass was literally on our table every time he came by. I understand wanting to pack in as many diners as possible, but it was pretty uncomfortable at times.

So in conclusion, Ela: great food, too much waiter-ass in my face.

And I couldn’t find a clip of Leslie suggesting headlines to the reporter so I’ve included another random funny Parks and Rec clip: