Philadelphia hoagie tradition showcased in CBS News segment
A CBS News Sunday Morning segment has explored Philadelphia’s enduring love of the hoagie, with Liberty Kitchen executive chef Beau Neidhardt demonstrating to correspondent Susan Spencer how to build a giant sandwich in the city’s traditional style.
The feature, which first aired on 17 May 2026, revisited the long-standing legend that the hoagie emerged during the First World War, when workers at Philadelphia’s Hog Island shipyard carried large sandwiches packed with meat, cheese and vegetables for their long shifts.
Hog Island was once the world’s largest shipyard. At its peak, it employed more than 30,000 people and produced 122 ships in two years. The site was later absorbed into the area now occupied by Philadelphia International Airport.
Historians say the exact origins of both the sandwich and its name remain uncertain. One widely repeated account links “hoagie” to Italian-American shipyard workers and the former Hog Island, while other theories trace the term to Philadelphia sandwich makers in the 1930s. The word was in regional use by the middle of the 20th century and later became closely identified with the city.
For the demonstration, Neidhardt assembled a Liberty Kitchen version using a sesame-seeded roll, dressing, deli meats, house-made relish, onions, tomato, lettuce and oregano. He also prepared the restaurant’s kale-Caesar cutlet hoagie, a modern variation that attracted national attention after social-media videos helped drive a surge in demand.
Neidhardt told CBS that he eats roughly two and a half to three hoagies a week and described the sandwich as more than a meal for local residents. “It is a lifestyle. It is Philadelphia,” he said.