Dear Anthony (may i call you anthony?),

Here's the deal aobut philly. Philly has gotten the **** (pardon my french) end of the stick culinarily for the past several years. Yes, we have cheesesteaks, and soft pretzels, and water ice but man can't live on junk food alone. My opinion if you want your arteries clogged go to Arby's. But if people are willing to wait in line in the blistering cold for a heaping pile of beef smothered in cheese food product its worth a trip, right? Philly is known for the infamous Pat's vs. Geno's rivalry and we'd love to hear your take on it... hell you might even be able to change a few people's minds, or start an all out riot and us philly folk love our riots (see philly's winning the 2008 world series.
The bar bones of the matter is philly is really just a melting pot, rip off, tweaker whatever you want to call it of the culinary world. we have our only little china town. New York thin crust? Chicago deep dish? why don't you head to Lorenzo's and son's and pay $2.50 for a slice of no fussy topping plain done right cheese pizza (that they have to fold to fit on the plate fyi.) In the mood for mexican? try mexicali's wide variety of, frankly, some of the best damn mexican food I've ever had for ridiculously cheap or walk two blocks to Distrito and pay a little extra for superb food and a killer, not too pretentious atmosphere. (Personnally pretentiousness ruins my appetite i'm there for the food not to see how much you spent on decor).
But that's off topic. what i'm trying to say is philly is diverse and its food is a reflection of its people. We're a really random ass city. We have superb gastronomical affairs located adjacent to sadly underappreciated mom and pop joints. To say we're jsut cheesesteaks is personally insulting and to counter that by saying we're all beer well, jesus, that's worse. We have some exceptional brews in this fine city but let the food speak for itself. Its actually counter productive to say our food is best when choked down with a cold one and makes us sound like bar food U.S.A. Not to mention that its quite rude to assume that the prospect of excessive consumption of alcohol would be any kind of selling point to you, am I right?
Sarcasm aside, I love philly and philly loves food. so in the TRUE spirit of brotherly love we invite you to let your stomach lead the way (that was even a little too cliche for me.) I can make recommendations until i'm blue in the face but you're better off just wandering around and seriously man, follow your nose. You'll never know until you try, so please come try philly!

Thank you,
KatieO