Butter chicken has taken an indirect route to South Street’s Pronto Pizza: from its roots in North India to a Pakistani family kitchen in Northeast Philadelphia, then into an Italian American pizza shop and, finally, onto a roll.
At Pronto, just off Broad Street, it’s a secret menu item. Owner Umair Cheema tops chopped marinated chicken with Cooper Sharp and butter chicken sauce based on his mother Asma’s recipe. The $12 sandwich is Cheema’s addition to a citywide assortment of cheesesteak variations that includes versions made with oxtail and salmon.
Cheema does not skimp. He lightly toasts the Liscio’s roll before adding nearly a pound of a mixture of chicken and melted cheese. Then comes a ladle or two of the rich butter sauce, which comes perilously close to gilding the lily.
Umair Cheema owns Pronto Pizza, 1347 South St., which previously was LaScala’s Pronto.Michael Klein / Staff
Cheema, 28, had eaten plenty of butter chicken in Pakistan, but he credits his younger brother, Adil, with inspiring Pronto’s version. After the family moved to Northeast Philadelphia in 2019, Adil routinely asked their mother to cook for him.
“One day my mom made butter chicken, and I was like, ‘Mom, this is outstanding. This is the kind of butter chicken I eat at restaurants,’” Cheema said.
A staple entree on Indian restaurant menus in the United States, butter chicken typically features yogurt-marinated chicken in a mild, creamy tomato sauce seasoned with onions, garlic, and spices such as garam masala, turmeric, cumin, and coriander. The dish has proved adaptable to other formats. Chef Reuben Asaram, for example, has incorporated it into his Mexican-Indian “Reubychanga.”
Pronto is also not the area’s only shop making a butter chicken cheesesteak. Double Down Kitchen at Ridge Hall in Ambler serves one alongside versions made with jerk chicken and bulgogi-marinated rib-eye.
Owner Umair Cheema pulls a slice of pizza from the oven at Pronto Pizza, 1347 South St.Michael Klein / Staff
Cheema’s sandwich is part of his effort to broaden the menu at Pronto, which he bought from restaurateur Rob LaScala. He largely retained LaScala’s offerings of pizza, sandwiches, wings, pasta, meatballs, chicken Parmesan, and grilled salmon platters.
Cheema had not expected to enter the pizza business. After arriving from Pakistan, where his father had worked as a banker, he took a job at Kabobeesh, his aunt’s West Philadelphia restaurant. His father was diagnosed with severe diabetes soon afterward, while his mother found warehouse work.
“I took charge,” Cheema said. “I was like, ‘Let me deal with all of this now. It’s my time to handle this.’”
His opportunity came when an uncle learned that Naz’s Pizza in Chester was for sale.
“He called me and said, ‘Someone is really desperate. They want to sell their pizza shop. I know you have some money saved. If you really want to look into it, I’ll help you out, too.’”
Barbecue chicken pizza slice at Pronto Pizza, 1347 South St.Michael Klein / Staff
Cheema drove to Chester the next day and arrived around 3 p.m., hardly primetime at most pizzerias. “I saw people coming in and the phones ringing,” he said. “That means a business is working. So I told my uncle, ‘Everything seems OK. They are short a couple of things, but we can fix it.’”
Cheema and his uncle bought the shop, and Cheema said sales doubled within six months. They eventually expanded to six shops before dividing the business to pursue separate growth; Cheema sold off the Chester store. Besides the Pronto at 1347 South St., Cheema owns another Pronto in Torresdale, Holme Style Pizza near Holme Circle, and Old English Style Pizza in Olney.
His most serious setback came in September 2022, when the three-story East York Street building housing Key Pizza, his busiest shop, collapsed. “You couldn’t tell there had been a pizza shop there the night before,” Cheema said. Construction work next door was blamed.
The roll-up door and some bricks are all that remained of Key Pizza at 2329 E. York St. after its collapse on Sept. 14, 2022.Jessica Griffin / Staff Photographer
No injuries were reported, but he lost the business, and the resulting insurance litigation was resolved only recently, about 3½ years later, he said.
Cheema does not plan to rebuild Key. He is focused instead on Pronto, its catering operation, and potential additional locations. The butter chicken cheesesteak gives him a way to integrate his family’s cooking into the kind of business in which he found his footing.
“Everybody in Philly knows what a cheesesteak is, and there are so many good places out there already selling cheesesteaks that are famous for them,” he said. “But I wanted to do something different, and something that still relates to Philly.”
The Phillies tell me they sell more than 40 brands of beer, priced from $6.99 for a 12-ounce can of nonalcoholic beer to $17.69 for a 24-ounce premium can. Beer is everywhere at Citizens Bank Park, including at a humongous walk-through cooler on the main level.
I recently strolled into that cooler and found a lager — at $38.48 for two 19-ounce cans — that paired nicely with chicken fingers and the Fightin’ Phils. OK, so 64 ounces of the exact same beer costs $11.99 at Acme, but you can’t watch the Phils live from Acme, can you?
“Sometimes, things become clichés because they’re true: A cool beer on a warm summer day at the ballpark is among the great joys of fandom,” says the avuncular Glen Macnow, the former Inquirer reporter (and colleague) and sports talk-show host whose What’s Brewing PA beer show appears on the NBC Sports Philadelphia networks.
Macnow — who is, full disclosure, also the part-owner of Conshohocken Brewing Co., which vends two of its brands at the ballpark — adds: “I’ve spent many an afternoon (or evening) with a beer in one hand, a hot dog in the other, juggling both so I can fill out the scorecard balanced on my knees.
“Those are simple and eternal pleasures. Baseball isn’t designed for trendy cocktails in a can; it’s designed for the tradition of leisurely enjoying a cold brew over several innings as you try to convince the guy in the next seat that the manager (whoever he is) is the dumbest one in Phillies history.”
OK, but just in case you don’t care for a brewski, the Phillies also sell about a dozen different trendy cocktails in cans, with prices running from $14.55 to $23.99. These are no bargains, either, but consider the alternative: The Phillies used to not sell booze at all.
Baby boomers like me vividly remember the towering, then-state-of-the-art right field scoreboard at Connie Mack Stadium, topped by a gigantic advertisement for Ballantine Beer (and its three-ring logo, for Purity, Body, and Flavor).
A handmade model of the iconic Ballantine Beer scoreboard at Connie Mack Stadium by Phillies fan Bernie Valente.Courtesy of Bernie Valente
Well, that scoreboard was erected in 1956, five years before beer was sold there.
The Phillies first legally sold beer inside Connie Mack Stadium, their musty old park in North Philadelphia, on Aug. 7, 1961, when they put seven local brands of bottled beer on sale for 35 cents, first poured into a paper cup by eight vendors working the aisles.
The paper cup was a vital part of the transaction, because, prior to legal sales, Phillies fans used to sneak in cans of beer, often sold in “cold packs” at nearby bars like Charlie Quinn’s Deep Right Field Cafe at 20th and Lehigh.
Beer cans were heavier in those days, so they tended to become missiles when the umpires missed a call, or if the Phillies stank, which was quite often.
The low point probably came on June 12, 1959, when a twi-night doubleheader against San Francisco was halted after five innings because of rain. The Phillies were no-hit — but even worse, fans were denied rain checks to both games because the first game was official.
As Frank Fitzpatrick, the now-retired Inquirer reporter who attended the game as a 9-year-old, recalled in the paper in 2016: “Suddenly, one empty can fluttered toward the field. A second followed quickly. Soon, it was a dangerous deluge. So many were tossed that cans obscured the tarp, from the mound to the batter’s box.”
That was not good news for Robert R.M. Carpenter, the Phillies owner, who dearly wanted a new ballpark for his team. Plans had been drafted for a 45,000-seat, $8 million stadium in the Torresdale section of Philadelphia, with an adjoining theme park, yacht basin, and bird refuge park adjacent to I-95. Beer sales would bring in some cash for that amazing project.
On June 20, 1961, the Pennsylvania Senate passed a previously approved bill by the state House that would permit the sale of beer every day but Sunday at sporting events at stadiums in the state that seated more than 25,000. (The Pittsburgh Pirates also happened to be looking for a new ballpark.)
But they faced stout foes. After voting against the bill earlier in 1961 that would have enabled the Phillies to sell beer, a Democratic state assemblyman from Philadelphia, Charles Heavey, predicted that the sale of beer would actually “contaminate” youngsters.
So … first the beer had to be poured into a paper cup before drinking, preventing another beer can pileup on the field like the one in 1959. And there would be more than one starting pitcher: Schmidt’s, Esslinger, Old Dutch, Horlacher, Neuwiler and, yep, Ballantine were all included in the original sudsy rotation.
A 1962 newspaper advertisement for Ballantine beer.
Larry Merchant provided statistics in his Daily News column the next day: A total of 3,739 beers were served to 5,586 who attended that Aug. 7 game, a 3-1 Pittsburgh victory on a Monday, which was also the Phillies’ 10th straight loss. No bottles or cans were thrown on the field, he reported, but fans did pop the cups and try to throw those onto the field — often in vain.
“For serious drinkers, it was about a four-beer game, just two and a half hours long,” Merchant joked. “For serious Phillies fans, it was a six-beer job. They look better that way.”
Merchant made note of signs at the entrances that read, “Bringing in of canned beer or bottled beverages will be a cause for ejection from the park.” Nonetheless, he reported, seven would-be beer smugglers were caught at the gate, their brews returned when they left the park.
Those 1961 Phillies were so lousy that their losing streak grew to 23 games, still a modern record. After the Phillies beat Milwaukee, 7-4, on Aug. 20 in the second game of a doubleheader, their flight home was welcomed by 500 fans at 1 a.m. the next day at the airport.
About 500 Phillies fans welcomed the team home at the airport like conquering heroes after the club broke a 23-game losing streak in August 1961.
“They are selling rocks at $1.50 a pail,” Phillies pitcher Frank Sullivan, looking out of the plane, joked to his teammates.
He then wisecracked: “Leave the plane at five-minute intervals. That way, they can’t get us all with one burst.”
In truth, the beer ploy sales did not seem to provide much of a boost to the 1961 Phillies, who lost 107 games and finished last in the National League in home attendance in 1961, averaging only about 7,600 per home game. But a door, or many brewskis, had been cracked.
Beer would not be sold at Sunday home Phillies games until 1972, after the Phillies moved to Veterans Stadium, following the amendment of the ancient Pennsylvania Blue Laws, intended to curtail activities on Sundays (including Phillies and A’s home games until 1934).
“My parents didn’t drink, so I always associated the public consumption of alcohol as something dark and troubling,” Fitzpatrick told me recently. “That feeling was confirmed in spades at that 1959 game.
“By 1966, the summer I worked at the ballpark, I felt differently. I was a soda vendor, and beer suddenly was a precious commodity. Now I envied the beer sellers, because they made the most money and had the least amount of walking. Occasionally, rowdy fans would harass young vendors like me, hurling popcorn containers or wadded-up cups at us, [but] it definitely was comforting to know you wouldn’t have to dodge metal cans. On the other hand, in ’66 the smell of spilled beer now permeated the place. I don’t remember that same aroma when fans brought their own.”
Carpenter never did get his Torresdale stadium. After a one-year delay because of construction, however, the Vet opened in 1971 in South Philadelphia. A few fans grumbled about paying 75 cents for a 12-ounce beer served there by a vendor, perhaps because those same items were 40 cents and 60 cents, respectively, at Yankee and Shea Stadiums in New York.
Gene Mauch managed the Phillies during their historic 107-loss season in 1961. That team dropped 23 straight contests.
The pricing was actually meant to be sort of a deterrent. Bud Vye, the Connie Mack stadium manager, told The Inquirer, “At these prices, they’ve got to bring a bankroll just to get bombed out.”
But beer stuck around. A 1998 Daily News exposé into how Ogden Entertainment, then the vendor at the Vet, was caught skimming a half million dollars in annual beer sales led to a price reduction. Local brands, kicked to the side by the national brews, were sold again when the Phillies moved to Citizens Bank Park in 2004. (Large premium drafts then sold for $6.)
Cups were eventually discontinued, and most beer at the ballpark is sold in much lighter cans (which, it should be noted, are opened by the cashier, lest someone try to hurl a full can on the field). Dozens of different brands of beer can be spotted at any Phillies game.
“A big part of this is marketing,” Macnow tells me. “Beer at the ballpark is no longer poured into paper cups, so there’s a long-term benefit to seeing people walking around the park holding cans of your beer. Labeling becomes important. Naming beers becomes important.”
And so is the vessel itself. The Phillies continue to sell “beverage bats,” large hollow plastic souvenir baseball bats that can be filled with any beverage. Those are not cheap, either. Phillies fans may be held captive by the prices, but beer and baseball are inseparable.
Dave Caldwell lives in Manayunk and covered sports for The Inquirer from 1986 to 1995.
Prosecutors on Thursday withdrew all charges against a Philadelphia Family Court judge accused of assaulting his wife and daughter earlier this year, saying that the women did not wish to proceed with the case and that the judge had shown proof of “extensive mitigation” in the months since the incident.
Michael Fanning was charged with aggravated assault, strangulation, and related crimes in March after prosecutors said he repeatedly punched his wife in the face, choked her, and dragged his 30-year-old daughter to the ground by her hair, causing her to cut her face, during a fight at their East Torresdale home.
But Assistant District Attorney Brian Collins said Wednesday that the two women were evaluated by medics and did not suffer injuries. They did not want to move forward with prosecuting Fanning, he said.
Common Pleas Court Judge Michael Fanning.Courtesy of Philadelphia Courts
That, combined with the “extensive mitigation” records Fanning provided to prosecutors and the court, led the district attorney’s office to withdraw the charges, he said.
Collins did not detail the forms of mitigation Fanning presented, and Berks County Court Judge Jeffrey Sprecher, who presided over the case to avoid any conflict of interest with Fanning’s peers, did not ask during the brief hearing.
But at a hearing in March, Fanning’s wife said he had voluntarily entered a 30-day inpatient recovery program to treat his alcoholism, an issue the family had worked to address in the past.
Fanning did not testify during Wednesday’s hearing. He thanked Sprecher for his time before leaving the courtroom.
He declined to comment through his attorney, Fortunato Perri Jr.
Within days of his arrest, the Pennsylvania Court of Judicial Discipline, which adjudicates complaints against judges, suspended him without pay.
It was not immediately clear Wednesday how that judicial discipline case would proceed after the outcome of the case, or whether Fanning would be allowed to return to the bench.
Daniel Martino didn’t set out to build an empire of pie shops. He just wanted somewhere to get coffee without leaving the neighborhood.
When he bought his home in Port Richmond in 2013, the closest coffee shop was an hour round trip, he said. “Selfishly, I thought, I can put a little coffee shop here.”
The takeout window at Little Susie’s flagship location at 2532 E. Lehigh Ave.Jessica Griffin / Staff Photographer
And what goes better with a cup of coffee than pie? He had a recipe he’d been baking for family get-togethers.
Seven years after Martino opened Little Susie’s Coffee & Pie in the building next door to his house, his modest idea has grown into four Philadelphia locations, with a fifth expected to open Friday at the former Pop’s Bun Shop in Bella Vista, a franchise headed to Milwaukee, and plans for additional shops in Fairmount and Northern Liberties. All his stores run from takeout windows, requiring little more than coffee stations and electric ovens.
Today, the company employs 28 people and turns out about 1,200 pies a day from a bakery occupying two cramped rooms in the corner rowhouse on Lehigh Avenue.
Owner Daniel Martino with trays of pies at Little Susie’s.Jessica Griffin / Staff Photographer
Martino, 46, who grew up in Northeast Philadelphia, has spent much of his working life around food. As a teenager, he worked at a swim club snack bar before taking a kitchen job at what is now Jefferson Torresdale Hospital.
After studying film at Temple University, he joined Public House Investments, which ran City Tap House, as a DJ before becoming the hospitality company’s creative director, designing menus, logos, ads, and marketing material.
When the property next door to his house became available, Martino said he used a home-equity line of credit to buy it before securing a Small Business Administration loan to renovate it.
The takeout window at Little Susie’s. Hand-lettered signs advertise the specials.Jessica Griffin / Staff Photographer
By the time Little Susie’s opened in December 2019, he said, “I had maxed out every credit card I had. I even had to go to the bank, hat in hand, and sign a signature loan for the last $10,000 just to get it open.”
His shop offered a simple menu, little more than coffees and lattes and four kinds of pies. There was a counter for seating. The first day brought in about $180, and “it was the greatest day of my life,” Martino said.
Then the pandemic arrived. When COVID-19 restrictions shut down indoor dining, Little Susie’s shifted to window service. Customers called in orders, paid over the phone, and picked up coffee and pies outside. Even after restrictions were lifted, the shop never reopened indoors.
It wasn’t what Martino had imagined. His idea was ”Cheers with coffee — the neighbors and the mailman talking about the weather,” he said.
Instead, customers embraced the walk-up model and the seating at a picnic table beneath a maple tree. The pies especially quickly caught on. The signature is the crust. Rather than trimming away the excess dough, workers twist it around each pie by hand, creating what Martino calls “a fluffiness that the fork doesn’t provide — that flaky tenderness you want in a pie crust. The twist is its own special treat in and of itself.”
Owner Daniel Martino (rear, right) with staff and pies at Little Susie’s, set up in a rowhouse.Jessica Griffin / Staff Photographer
The pies, which are baked and not fried, are made with a simple crust of flour, butter, sugar, and salt. It’s a 48-hour process. Dough is mixed at the company’s Kensington location, where a 20-quart mixer runs nearly all day. The dough rests for 24 hours before it is brought to Port Richmond, where it is sheeted, filled, twisted, frozen, and delivered to the other stores to be baked to order.
Little Susie’s first menu included only blueberry, pork roll, apple, and mushroom Swiss fillings. Today, it offers about a dozen varieties, with eight available year-round and others rotating seasonally. “You can practically throw anything in this pie crust,” Martino said. “I haven’t been disappointed yet.”
Pies at Little Susie’s.Jessica Griffin / Staff Photographer
Pork roll remains the top seller, followed by apple, and a sausage, egg, and cheese breakfast pie encrusted with everything bagel seasoning. Seasonal flavors have included ham and Brie, chocolate-covered strawberry, and Cajun crab and corn. None are gluten-free because of the shop’s limitations, he said.
Not every idea works. “We tried to make a cannoli pie, but the cream just melted right out,” he said.
Each shop sells 200 to 300 pies a day. The production kitchen now employs 11 bakers, who track production on a whiteboard nicknamed “the Pieble.” Each variety get its own knife mark on top; an inverted V, for example, denotes mushroom Swiss.
The “Pieble” at Little Susie’s, the flagship pie takeout place located at 2532 E. Lehigh Ave., in Philadelphia, June 24, 2026.Jessica Griffin / Staff Photographer
Lena Hurchick, who has worked at Little Susie’s for three years, said she enjoys “the competition of filling all the shops” and watching customers eat pies she helped make.
“Susie” was the name of the dog that belonged to the former owner of the building. “When we had the community meeting here, I said, ‘I’m thinking Little Susie’s,’ and people started crying,” he said.
Lena Hurchick crimps mushroom pies at Little Susie’s.Jessica Griffin / Staff Photographer
Expansion has brought complications. A planned Fairmount location was nearly ready to open before the city determined that the property required zoning approval for food sales. “The city does not make it easy,” he said, adding that it will take months to get onto the zoning board’s calendar.
Even so, he expects the company to keep growing. He has a handshake deal for a spot in Northern Liberties. Milwaukee is planned as the first franchise — operated by a friend — while Martino has begun thinking about a larger bakery in Philadelphia.
“We’re basically bursting at the seams,” he said. “We’re probably going to need a 10,000-square-foot facility.”
Owner Daniel Martino at Little Susie’s.Jessica Griffin / Staff Photographer
He wants that growth to remain slow enough that the pies are still made fresh every day. “I don’t want to get too far away from making them every day, because then it just becomes some frozen-food empire,” he said.
Little Susie’s Coffee & Pies’ locations are at 2532 E. Lehigh Ave. in Port Richmond, Second and Chestnut Streets in Old City, 1772 N. Front St. in Kensington, and 1754 S. Chadwick St. in Point Breeze. A fifth, at 800 S. Ninth St. in Bella Vista, is due to open Friday. Hours are 7 a.m. to 2 p.m. daily.
