PHILADELPHIA — Travelers passing through Philadelphia International Airport on Monday may have expected long security lines. But the longest line was made of cheesesteaks.<\/p>\n
Organizers say they achieved a new Guinness World Record for the longest line of cheesesteak sandwiches, with 1,291 lined up inside a departure hall to mark National Cheesesteak Day. The display far surpassed the previous benchmark of 500 sandwiches.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe went for the world record for the longest cheesesteak in history,\u201d said Clarence LeJeune of MarketPlace PHL, a company that operates airport concessions. \u201cToday we accomplished that goal here in Philadelphia.\u201d<\/p>\n
The cheesesteak, which originated in Philadelphia in the early 1900s, is widely considered the city’s signature food. LeJeune called it \u201csynonymous\u201d with Philadelphia, alongside its sports culture.<\/p>\n
People in black aprons assembled cheesesteaks along tables set up in the walkway between Terminals B and C, filling rolls from silver buckets as they moved past storefronts.<\/p>\n
After the record was certified, volunteers handed out the sandwiches to travelers, airport workers and Transportation Security Administration staff, who have been working without pay<\/a> during the government shutdown.<\/p>\n LeJeune joked there are few hard rules for cheesesteaks, which is part of the \u201cbeauty of the experience\u201d \u2014 except, he said, \u201cYou don\u2019t ask for Swiss cheese,” referencing a 2003 moment when then-presidential candidate John Kerry drew criticism in Philadelphia<\/a> for ordering one with Swiss.<\/p>\n Michael Empric, a Guinness World Records adjudicator, said rules require all food used in record attempts to be eaten or donated.<\/p>\n \u201cIn this case, they are going to TSA agents who definitely could use some lunch,\u201d Empric said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PHILADELPHIA — Travelers passing through Philadelphia International Airport on Monday may have expected long security lines. But the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":78434,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[67383,37203,34368,1165,60,38,6842,69,71,70,44],"class_list":["post-147825","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-philadelphia","tag-67383","tag-aerospace-and-defense-industry","tag-airport-security","tag-article","tag-business","tag-general-news","tag-oddities","tag-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia-headlines","tag-philadelphia-news","tag-u-s-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147825","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=147825"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147825\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/78434"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=147825"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=147825"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=147825"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}