Maybe the Best Cheesesteaks Aren’t in Philly: The Wild Ride of Nicky’s and Ant’s

Nicky’s and Ant’s mangia cheesesteak, with long hots / Photography by Gene Smirnov

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Freezing cold, standing in the hard, bright midwinter sunlight in the gravel drive beside a Gilbertsville brewery, Anthony Billetta and I are talking about cheesesteaks.

Talking shit about cheesesteaks, really. Who we like, who we don’t, why. We’re philosophizing about cheesesteaks in the way that only people from here can, because only people from here — Philadelphia, its suburbs, this region — have that kind of context. The almost rabbinical immersion and investment of daily study, of opinions hammered out across years of debate.

“Look,” I tell him. “I’ve eaten a lot of cheesesteaks. And these? They’re the best I’ve ever had.”

And I mean that. I wouldn’t lie. Anthony and his partner, Nick Moccia, run a food truck called Mangia Mobile that has sat here beside Sunset Hill Brewing on Leidy Road for months. Their sandwiches are monsters — huge, heavy, stuffed with rough-chopped meat and gooey cheese on seeded rolls that take two hands to hold. They’re the kind of cheesesteaks you dream about: that Platonic ideal of warmth and generosity, sweating inside a plastic bag in the passenger seat on game day. And standing there, waiting for my steaks, talking through the truck’s little window with Anthony while Nick works at the other end? That’s when Anthony tells me that Mangia is closing.

Okay, moving, really. Not closing-closing. But this has happened before. Mangia started as a thrown-together catering operation from two friends who’d grown up together in the unglamorous end of the restaurant industry, working in family restaurants (Nick’s parents own Moccia’s Train Stop in Schwenksville) and local joints. Nick went away to study marketing at West Chester. Anthony played football at Albright in Reading, but dropped out. He wanted to do his own thing — open a gym, maybe. Or a food truck. He was dating Nick’s little sister, came home one weekend and was talking to Nick’s mom, told her about his plans, and she said he had to talk to Nick because Nick was thinking the same thing. Not a gym, obviously, but a food truck. A really good food truck.

On the phone later, Anthony tells me the whole story: how catering turned into a food truck at WCU in 2023, how collabs and nonstop hustle turned into a partnership with the crew from Sunset Hill that was so successful (like sell-out-every-night successful, like questionable-overflow-parking-behind-a-barn successful) that one weekend turned into every weekend and, eventually, into a full-time thing that, briefly, had the best cheesesteaks anywhere (and some really good fries, chased with Sunset Hill’s excellent day-drinking beers) being served daily at a small brewery at the top of a hill in Gilbertsville where Suloman’s Dairy used to be. Where Nick and Anthony used to go as kids, cutting through the woods and climbing the hill for ice cream and milkshakes in the summer.

From Mangia Mobile to Nicky’s and Ant’s: Anthony Billetta and Nick Moccia in their Pottstown kitchen

On the phone later, Anthony tells me about zoning battles, restrictions put on them by the township that allowed them to operate only three days a week, for five hours each day, and that were killing the business.

“We followed unjust orders to keep the peace,” Anthony explains. “Can you just say that?” And I agree because both Mangia and Sunset Hill are still fighting the township. Because Mangia is leaving, but it’s (maybe) only temporary. Nick and Anthony have a new brick-and-mortar space now, in the High Street Terminal in Pottstown, and a new name, too: Nicky’s and Ant’s. They opened the Saturday before the Eagles won the Super Bowl and have been going ever since, every Wednesday through Saturday, from 11 a.m. until 7 p.m. (or until they sell out of 14-inch wood-fired pies, cheese fries, and those killer cheesesteaks).

And I’ll follow them there. I’ll make the drive as often as I can because those cheesesteaks are worth it. Because I’ve probably eaten every great steak sandwich in the city at least twice, and the ones Nicky and Ant make are just better in every way. The bread is better (Anthony won’t say on the record where he gets it, but trust me) — the way it soaks up the steak grease like a sponge without ever getting soggy. The meat, chopped rough and thick. The big whacks of onion. The oozing cheese. No part of it is accidental. None of it is a mistake.

“Everything has to have intentionality,” Anthony tells me. “We don’t skimp out. We don’t do something just because everyone else thinks we should do it.”

So the best cheesesteak in Philly was never in Philly to begin with. It was everywhere else — in West Chester and Gilbertsville, at a winery in Perkiomenville and catered events on the Main Line. And now, it’s in Pottstown, in a food hall on High Street, made by two guys who care deeply about doing exactly this.

And, for the record, their pizzas are really good too.

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Published as “Need Steak, Will Travel” in the April 2025 issue of Philadelphia magazine.