There are an estimated 4,000 restaurants in San Francisco collectively serving up tens of thousands of dishes. For Gazetteer SF, food enthusiast and man-about-town Omar Mamoon is recommending the best ones. This is Order Up.
If there is such a thing as a Sandwich Capital of America, it would undoubtedly be Philadelphia, aka, the city of Hoagie Love. Philly is also the home of the cheesesteak, and, perhaps my personal favorite handheld, the juicy roast pork sando. I visit the birthplace of America once a year to get my fix, usually at John’s Roast Pork, an old school institution that’s well worth the fight to PHL or Amtrak to 30th Street Station.
San Francisco now has a new and excellent option to fill the porcine-shaped hole in me: Jerry’s Roast Pork at 2 Embarcadero Center, 2nd Floor.
Jerry’s opened last November and comes from baker and former Philadelphian Matt Kosoy of Rosalind Bakery in Pacifica. Kosoy opened his bakery in 2019, but I first learned about him a year later after I found out he was behind the beautiful bread at Palm City when it first opened.
Kosoy doesn’t come from a restaurant or baking background; he worked in web development for most of his career before moving to San Francisco. But he brings the most important thing to any culinary project: passion.
“It’s irrational and illogical, but I just love seeing bread come out of the oven and the crust set,” he told me. “I can’t explain it. I just love it.”
Lucky us. His seeded hoagie rolls are excellent: light and airy on the inside, with a pronounced crisp on the exterior. They’re structurally sound enough to hold the contents of the sandwich (more on that below), but don’t require too much tugging or tearing with your teeth to bite through. He bakes the rolls every morning at Rosalind (which is named after his maternal grandmother) before delivering them to Jerry’s (which is named after Rosalind’s husband, Kosoy’s grandfather).
But let’s get to the meat of the matter: It starts with a big 20-pound pork butt that Kosoy seasons overnight with salt, sugar, fennel seed, chili flake, and dried herbs like rosemary, oregano, and thyme.
The next day, he slow roasts the pork over a bed of sliced yellow onion and fennel before straining the jus and letting it chill.
“We purposefully cool the pork down overnight so the fat congeals,” Kosoy told me. “Then we slice it cold so the fat can be part of the flavor of the final sandwich,” he said.
Then he warms the au jus and holds the sliced pork in the super flavorful liquid. If you haven't been counting, this is a three-day process.
The other crucial component to Jerry’s roast pork is the broccoli raab, which Kosoy tenderizes in a dough mixer to break up the tough fibrous stems. He then slowly cooks it in the liquid it releases along with garlic confit to help mellow the sharp bitterness.
To assemble the sandwich, he slices open a seeded hoagie roll, lines it with sliced aged provolone that lends a savory nutty layer, piles on a plethora of pork, adds on a bounty of the braised broccoli raab, and finishes it all with a shower of shaved pecorino Toscana for a slightly salty note.
Kosoy wraps the whole thing in a yellow-and-white checkered paper that turns translucent from the fat and drippings and sells it for $15.60.
It’s glorious. Ask for extra napkins.
You could get the thing delivered, but the real move is to go there, order a roast pork and take it upstairs to enjoy your Philly-worthy sandwich in the Embarcadero Center’s quiet little oasis in downtown SF.
