The great thing about CheeseSteakTown.com is that it’s YOUR website, Philadelphia!

You get to nominate Philly’s best steak places, you get to vote on who deserves to be in the Top Ten and you get to post comments about other people’s choices. And when you’re done sharing all your brilliant insights about cheese steaks, you can go to Cheesy Comments and sound off about anything else you’ve seen on the website.

That’s the Philadelphia Quaker way – everybody gets a chance to speak his or her mind. No wonder the search for Philadelphia’s best cheese steak is never-ending.

But somebody has to get the ball rolling, and that’s where we come in.

We’re the WHIZ KIDS – not to be confused with the 1950 pennant-winning Phillies, or that decades-old game show, or those World War II vets who became Ford execs. We’re not affiliated in any way with Kraft or its fabulous Cheez Whiz product. In fact, we don’t have much in common with each other – except a passion for Philadelphia and, in particular, a most incredible sandwich known as the cheese steak.

	BIG CHEESE is a rich kid from Chestnut Hill or the Main Line, or somewhere like that. When he was growing up, his dad took him around (in a Mercedes) to all of Philly’s best steak spots, so now he thinks he’s a “man of the people” as he combs Philly’s blue collar neighborhoods in HIS Mercedes in search of cheese steaks. Hey Big, we love ya – but with that navy blue suit and that helmet of perfectly coiffed hair, the locals can see you coming a mile away.
	LIBERTY BELLE also had a pretty nice upbringing and went off to a fancy New England college, where she became even more of a politically correct culture snob than she already was (and that’s saying a lot). But Lib has a soft spot for romance and – to the horror of her health-conscious vegetarian friends – she just loves cheese steaks dripping with Whiz. Liberty Belle has moved back to Philly and, like her famous bell namesake, she’s here to stay.
	OZZARD OF WHIZ could use his brains, good looks and biting sense of humor to become just about anything he wants in life. And apparently what he wants most is to taunt and torment his less gifted partner in crime (and fellow Whiz Kid) Son of Swoop, and to travel around Philadelphia at all hours of the day or night in search of the perfect cheese steak. At least Oz is good at what he does. In fact, he’s a Cheese Steak Whiz if ever a whiz there was.
	SOUTH FILLIE, like most of her neighbors in South Philadelphia’s Steak Belt, grew up on cheese steaks and knows a good one from a bad one. She’s not afraid to look you in the eye and tell you what’s what. But don’t worry – South Fillie’s a friendly, fun-loving girl. And judging from the number of siblings, cousins, nieces and nephews she has scattered all over the city, we guess all the other women in her family are fun-loving girls too.
	SON OF SWOOP was such an obnoxious child that one day his parents intentionally abandoned him on a hike through Pennypack Park, leaving him to be raised by a family of wolves. But beneath SOS’ psychotic exterior is a heart filled with love – for cheese steaks, beer, gambling, fast cars, fast women, and Philly sports teams. His dream in life? To see a championship parade on Broad Street, or to live to be 100 years old (whichever comes first).
	BROTHER LEE LOVE is either an actual ordained clergyman or some kooky former Byberry inmate who believes he is a famous evangelist from rural Mississippi. We’re not really sure. But Brother Lee is harmless enough, and his cheese steak choices are spot-on (at times they seem almost to be Divinely inspired), so we took him in as a Whiz Kid – white suit and tie, lavender shirt, blustery language and all.
	HALF WIT’ is CSW’s idiot savant. He looks like an idiot, talks like an idiot, acts like an idiot and dresses like an idiot. Believe it or not, he wears that chef’s hat not as part of his job, but as a fashion statement. (What exactly IS his job anyway?) Yet when it comes to finding Philadelphia’s great cheese steak places and describing their menus, personalities, neighborhoods and histories, Half Wit’ is a walking encyclopedia. We hired him on the spot.
	GRETA NORTHEAST is lovely and mysterious, apparently from Northeast Philadelphia, and.... African-American? Latino? Indian? She sure doesn’t look Swedish. Whatever and whoever Greta is, she has a knack for getting around the Delaware Valley, slipping in and out of cheese steak places undetected, and finding great steaks time and again – making her supremely qualified for the position of Whiz Kid and undercover CSW food critic.
	FRIED ONION is our token New Age, hippy-dippy mellow fellow. He’s smart, he’s cultured, he loves Philadelphia and he can sniff out a good steak place like a boar sniffs out truffles. But what’s with that DayGlo hair and glasses? They change colors like a human mood ring, and it’s really weird. If Fried’s taste-testing a new cheese steak and his hair turns cheesy gold, that’s usually a good sign. But if it turns moldy green, we had better say no more.