JD Vance Risks Unforgivable Cheese Faux Pas in Philadelphia

JD Vance, the Republican vice presidential nominee, may have earned some side-eyed glances in Philadelphia on Monday after he asked workers at Pat’s King of Steaks why they didn’t serve Swiss cheese on their sandwiches.

Vance, who was in Philadelphia campaigning, made the pilgrimage to the famous steak sandwich joint on Monday after a speech at a waste management facility. Pat’s, alongside its South Philly cross-street rival Geno’s Steaks, is one of the most famous steak sandwich shops in the City of Brotherly Love, and a frequent campaign stop for presidential candidates.

“I don’t like Swiss cheese either, but everybody says it’s insulting,” Vance asked at the Pat’s register. “Why do you guys hate Swiss cheese so much?” Both Pat’s and Geno’s only serve steaks with American, provolone, and cheez whiz.

“We don’t hate it, we just don’t use it. We usually use cheez whiz,” a Pat’s employee taking the Ohio senator’s order said.

“We thought that was funny,” Pat’s manager Sammy Garcia later told the Philadelphia Inquirer. He also told the paper that the Ohio senator tipped well.

Although stopping at Pat’s or Geno’s has become a right of passage for presidential candidates, it has also led to at least one major gaffe in the past. Vance was likely referencing Sen. John Kerry’s infamous cheesesteak incident on the campaign trail in 2003—when the then-Massachusetts Senator ordered his sandwich with Swiss cheese.

Some locals were incensed with Kerry’s faux pas. “Swiss cheese, as any local knows, is not an option,” wrote Craig LaBan, the Inquirer’s food critic, in 2003. “The Massachusetts Democrat may as well have asked for cave-aged Appenzeller. But even when Kerry was given a proper cheesesteak hoagie, he made matters worse by delicately nibbling at it as if it were tea toast.”

However, the staff at Pat’s told their local food critic that they planned to create a Swiss cheese special for the Massachusetts Senator—but only if Kerry won the election.

Kerry won the Democratic nomination, but eventually lost the 2004 presidential election to the incumbent, former President George W. Bush. However, the former Massachusetts senator did manage to carry Pennsylvania.