It is located at 3,500 miles from Philadelphia. But for Eagles fans, it feels at home.

Benjamin Franklin, a flawless colonial wanderer, once noticed that home is not just a place, or a matter or food. “The house is not home,” he said, “unless it contains fire for the mind, as well as the body.”

Centuries later, JP Aunt, his own accidental ambassador to Philadelphia in England, also learned it: the city – Nay, the people – cannot survive on the cheeses alone.

If the seat of American powers in London resides in the embassy, ​​a good piece of its spirit can be found on Cleveland Street in central London, secured between traditional British architecture, in the form of a large Philly diving bar: Passyunk Avenue, appointed for the famous South Philly road.

Entering inside should be transported. Philadelphia pendants frame windows; T -shirts and jerseys hang with a raft. Dollar accounts with written signatures wrote the walls. Among the many produced by US London bars, Passyunk Avenue stands out for a simple fact that it’s not a trick.

Mr. Tetia’s beard, at least a soft species for American sports lovers away from home. Pleasant, furious and strongly drawing from Philly’s (IN) of famous sports obsessions, Passyunk Avenue provides almost everyone who hopes to watch the main American sports. But it has extinguished one emerging market: NFL, which is the increase in popularity among the international audience. Commissioner Roger Goodell said it was I hope the league could expand abroad And, one day, even see a super bowl played in Europe.

Such high aspirations, however, are felt far from the comfortable ingredients of the Passyuk Avenue stool this week, for days before Philadelphia Eagles marched in a rematch with Kansas City Chiefs. Sitting among tchotchkes and trophies, it’s not really about football or cheese. Never really was about anything.

‘We are not a sports bar. We are a diving bar. ‘

Mr Teta remembers exactly where he was in January 2018, just before the last of Philadelphi’s (and the first) Super Bowl victory: painful and desperate under the railway port in Southeast London, packing his cheese truck.

The truck was a brief experiment for Mr Tetia, who grew up separated between southern New Jersey and South Philly, where he had a bunch of Italian relatives before moving to London to work. Convinced that he could win the city, he moved away from his corporate job in 2016 to gambling that the British could reach the appeal of Philadelphia’s famous sandwich.

But cutting out steaks from the trailer did not encourage the community that Mr. Aunt hoped.

“That’s not what I imagined,” he recalled thinking at the time. “I want to throw it away from the cheese. We will create a cultural output in the form of a Philly diving bar.”

Despite many pubs in central London, the authentic dive could not feel further. This did not prevent a lot of pubs to try, but efforts often feel like American Legija Disneyland. The lost time tested were lost, they were missed only once the ocean were far away: flickering neon. Football in the background. Gummy chairs and brave take from chatty foreigners.

These little touches are taken seriously in Philadelphia, where diving culture in advance Earth itselfAnd words like “Grit” and “dirt” are less deviations than honorable signs. (Atlantic City at least once sued Philadelphia magazine after calling him the reviewer “Dive.” According to the editor of the magazine: “This is a case of a place that can’t take over a compliment.”)

With the risk of throwing tea into a proverbial port: Pub culture is simply not the same.

With a renewed sense of purpose, Mr. Teta rented a space in the London neighborhood of Fitzrovia and opened his doors in March 2018. Business, known as Liberty Cheesesteak Company, when he disappeared from the truck, was reigned again as Avenue Passyunk after the main artery of South Philly, where she trained Rocky Balbo and where she is Pat’s and Geno’s (Geno’s (overrated) House of cheese still waging its generational war. G. Aunt’s name bought as a website domain before Cud.

“I don’t sell cheeses. It has always been about, for me, sharing cultural inheritance that my upbringing has made special, “said Mr. Aunt, bent for a wooden table at Fitzrovia Passyunk Avenue. Now this is one of three – there will be four locations soon, and they have everything The waiting lists of hundreds of deep for Sunday’s game, despite the local starting time at 11:30 pm.

“It really had no need to survive for six months,” Mr. Aunta said about his bar, laughing. “But it worked.”

‘This is Philly, through and through’

Avenue Passyunk is not only in cheese, and as Mr. Aunt’s and any life -giving, a fan of the outraged Philadelphia, the Eagles, not just football, would tell you. Lombardi is a holy grail than a trophy, the end of what can be described only as a painful emotional pilgrimage. Indeed, eagles are less fun than religion, as inherent in the city’s collective identity as Benjamin Franklin, as Soul music, as a city It is served from scratched counter into two streets.

Mr. Tetija’s lawyer is a obedient student. Holds licenses for the late night night to solve problems with time differences for American games after working hours. At least he found a Dutch butcher who could cut steak in the right way and develop his own clean when the British food codes would not release real (?).

“This is a very specific America, you know what I mean?” said Jessi Riley, a native of South Jersey and the head of the franchise culture. “This is Philly, through and through.”

Pasyunk Avenue has star bona. The Kelce brothers, including the retired Jason Orli Center, once recorded their popular “New Heights” podcast from the bar. Leader Phillies, Rob Thomson, Stopped to pull pine When the team played a series in London last year. Brent celek, retired eagles narrow end, Once there is fun with the Lombard trophy.

But the real credentials of Passyunk Avenue are his walls, not in sight of a bare inch. It is a sea of ​​famous: written messages such as “Delco” or “Wooker from the Cross”, in the eyes of Philly’s glorious tricky accent. The South Jersey band marching jacket. The Wawa Wawa shopping bag was perfectly crumpled as if she had pulled from the back seat and pulled herself to the wall.

(One drunken cancer once stepped down from what, an outsider, seemed to be a harmless props: a stuffed head of the eagle. It was, in fact, a donated costume head of Swoop, an official mascot of Eagles. International abused fans of Philadelphie onlineThe directed man returned his head, unharmed, the next day.)

Every piece of decor, Mrs. Riley said, was donated, often from the patron of such a touching feeling that they had taken their jersey from the back at the bar.

“I worked in several museums,” said Mrs. Riley, a trade historian. “I feel like I supply more culture in this place than I have ever done at any museum I have ever worked in.”

‘Go Birds’

Tuesday I went to Pasyunk Avenue on Tuesday, before Super Bowl, gloom and writing for Philly’s restless week. I left the city years ago, but I regularly came back to watch big games with my brother. Focused on the ocean, we will spend this super bowl separately.

The home is not cheese, or even a football team. Instead, I found it in the subtleties of this Fitzovia diving, reserved only for those who know they look: a gentle part of “O”, which turns it into “Owh. “Occasional” Yo “as Interpunction and Separation. Soft”shh ” That Mr. Aunt adds the second “Passyunk” syllable.

This bone is deep, for all who have ever left the place they love.

Mrs. Riley will watch a Sunday game in the same jacket for the 90s starter she had been decades – she pulled her off her chair and shows an internal name with a name, still carry the echo of a children’s letter. Mr. Aunt will be in the Leake Street tunnel, near the Battersea Passyunk Avenue location. There, they agreed to have a trunk -style party, in honor of the pre -band scene on Lincoln Financial Field, Eagles’ home stadium.

At the bar we are moving from prediction, careful of Jinxes. I will soon return to the cheese, I stand, pressing the door forward into the gray London cold.

“Go birds,” I say over my shoulder.

Behind me, a famous, divorced choir: Go birds.