Chicken Philly vs Famous Philly — Which Cheese Steak to Order

The Famous Philly runs $12.45 at 730 calories for a regular. The Chicken Philly runs $11.95 at 660. So the chicken is fifty cents cheaper and seventy calories lighter — a real difference, but a smaller one than most people assume when they order chicken as the virtuous choice.

For context, both are well below the Original Italian at 930 and dramatically below the Club Sub at 1,150. The Chicken Philly is in fact the lowest-calorie sub on the entire menu apart from the portabella, which means the lightest thing you can order at this chain comes off a grill rather than a cold slicer. That is the single most counterintuitive fact on the board.

The Famous Philly is the denser, richer sandwich. Grilled steak, onions, peppers and white American — the fat in the steak renders on the grill and coats everything, which is what gives a cheese steak its character. It is a substantial thing to eat and it is meant to be.

The Chicken Philly is lighter in texture as well as in calories. Grilled chicken does not render the way steak does, so the sub is drier and the peppers and onions come through more distinctly. Some people prefer this and some find it thin by comparison. Neither reaction is wrong.

The practical test: if you like a cheese steak because of the beef, the chicken version will disappoint you. If you like it because of the grilled onions, peppers and melted cheese, the chicken version delivers almost all of it for slightly less.

Both have chipotle and buffalo variants, and this is where the calorie discussion stops being about the protein at all. Adding chipotle mayo takes a Philly from 730 to roughly 1,000 — a two-hundred-and-seventy-calorie swing from one sauce.

That means a Chicken Philly with chipotle mayo is heavier than a plain Famous Philly, by a wide margin. If you are choosing chicken for the calorie saving and then adding a sauce, you have paid for the saving and thrown it away in the same order.

Sauce on the side is the fix and it is free. You get the flavour, you control the quantity, and the sub does not go soft on the way home.

First time on the hot board: the Famous Philly. It is the reference point, and everything else on the section makes more sense once you know what the baseline tastes like.

Watching calories: the Chicken Philly, plain, no added sauce. At 660 it is the lightest sub available and it does not feel like a compromise meal.

Ordering for a group: the Famous Philly holds better and pleases more people. Chicken cheese steaks dry out faster once they have been sitting.

Wanting the most food for the money: neither. The Big Kahuna is the maximal hot sub and the giant of any of them split between two people beats a regular each.

Hot subs travel badly. Twenty minutes into a delivery journey a cheese steak has steamed inside its wrapper and the roll has gone soft. Whichever of these you prefer, collect it if you can, and eat it within about ten minutes of collecting it.

This is a genuine argument for eating in the shop rather than taking it away, which is not something worth saying about most fast-casual food but is true here.