Since the Anthony Bourdain Food Trail officially debuted, I’ve been trying to visit the restaurants on the list.
To date, we’ve been to:
- Dock’s Oyster House- Atlantic City (before it was on TV)
- Tony’s Baltimore Grill- Atlantic City (before it was on TV)
- Donkey’s Place- Camden (prior to the trail debuting)
- Hiram’s Roadstand- Fort Lee
- Kubel’s- Barnegat Light
- James Salt Water Taffy
During Winter Break 2020 we were pretty limited as to where we could travel due to the pandemic. We didn’t want to quarantine once getting back to NY, so this limited us to some places close to home.
We ended up going to New Jersey and Pennsylvania to some new and familiar places. On the way to Philadelphia, we decided to make a quick stop in Camden, New Jersey. The mission was to grab a cheesesteak at Tony & Ruth’s Steaks which is also a stop on the Anthony Bourdain Food Trail!
We tried calling ahead but nobody answered the phone. I was almost going to skip going to Tony & Ruth’s but it wasn’t really out of the way and I’m sure glad that we did. Once we pulled up to the shop, we gave another call to place the order. (A couple of people were standing by the door so we knew it was open.)
The phone was answered with, “Hello, Ruthies“. I ordered a cheesesteak and was asked what I wanted on it. Before I got a chance to respond, I was offered it with onions and ketchup. This sounded good to me, I also figured this must be the way that its meant to be ordered.
Camden isn’t the safest area to hang out in and we wanted to get to Philly so we drove around 10-15 minutes to Fairmount Park to eat our sandwich and explore.
When I pulled the cheesesteak out, it did feel a bit light and I was surprised that there wasn’t any cheese or meat stuck to the wrapper. My first thoughts were that this wasn’t going to be very good.
I then took a bite into the cheesesteak and was beyond impressed.
The bread was super fresh and soft as can be. It was the perfect vehicle to hold the ingredients in. The meat, cheese, onions and ketchup all melded together to create an awesome and perfect cheesesteak flavor.
Overall, this would probably rank as one of my favorite cheesesteaks. Lucas loved it too and Kim doesn’t really care for cheesesteaks but this one hit the spot.
Final Thoughts:
I’m glad that we finally made it to Tony & Ruth’s. Bigger isn’t always better, this is probably the perfect size cheesesteak to eat and not feel gross after. We weren’t starving so we shared this one.
Anthony Bourdain picked a great spot and I plan to head back again in the future when we visit Philly!
Tony & Ruth’s Steaks is located at 837 N 8th St in Camden, New Jersey.
