A different kind of stakeout for ‘Skinny Joey’ Merlino: A cheesesteak shop of his own

It’s 2025 in Philadelphia, and everyone, it seems, is either hosting a podcast or opening a cheesesteak shop.

“Skinny Joey” Merlino, Philly’s best-known wiseguy, is doing both.

Some four years clear of prison, house arrest, and supervised release, Merlino is a year and a half into The Skinny Podcast With Joey Merlino, where he speaks his mind, handicaps sports, breaks stones, and settles scores from his decades in (and sometimes out) of trouble. There’s merch, too, including a T-shirt showing a grinning Merlino and President Donald Trump doing a thumbs-up during a brief photo op at one of Trump’s golf courses in 2023.

Merlino was never shy about providing sound bites while defending himself from allegations that he ran a faction of the Philadelphia Mafia during a bloody stretch of the 1990s, so hosting a podcast is not entirely far-fetched.

The takeout business is a little further out of left field. Merlino, 62, debuted Skinny Joey’s Cheesesteaks last weekend in a stand-alone building on South Broad Street a few blocks from Citizens Bank Park. You can’t miss the sign bearing a grinning portrait of Merlino, especially from I-76 overhead.

Cheesesteaks? Why?

“Why not?” Merlino said Thursday as his crew of a dozen workers, many who’ve worked at nearby shops, served a few curious early-bird customers. “This is Philly. We’re the king of the cheesesteaks.”

With lines that wrapped around the corner on Saturday, Merlino said the shop had to close two hours early, by 9 p.m., after selling 2,000 sandwiches and running out of food.

With so many shops, why open another?

“Because mine is the best,” Merlino said. “We got the best of everything — the ribeye, the cheese, but especially the roll.” Aversa’s Italian Bakery in Turnersville is baking a custom 10-inch roll (seeded and unseeded) that’s skinnier and less doughy than most Italian rolls but with Aversa’s signature crispy exterior. The sandwich is 16 bucks.

Merlino is keeping the menu small for now. Until Skinny Joey’s opens for breakfast, it’s offering little more than steak sandwiches, a chicken cheesesteak, roast pork (sourced from Esposito’s), mozzarella sticks, onion rings, and fries. “No waste,” he said.

Merlino does not profess to be a cook, though he said he taught himself in prison to make grilled cheese sandwiches with a clothes iron.

Joe Perri, his podcast sidekick, better known as Lil’ Snuff, is among the backers. “He hit a big parlay,” Merlino said of the investment capital.

In early 2024, the pair signed the lease for the shop at 3020 S. Broad St., which was previously Talk of the Town and Ace of Steaks, and had sat empty for more than a year. In May, even before work had started, the police and fire departments were called for what was ruled an arson caused by what reports said were two incendiary devices.

“There was no fire,” Merlino said. “There was all broken windows in here, and somebody threw a bottle in here with a rag. But nothing burned. There was nothing in here. Nothing could burn. Concrete don’t burn. That’s why jails are concrete.”

Construction, under consultant and kitchen designer Fred Vidi, proceeded uneventfully, although the gas line had to be replaced and, a week before the planned opening on March 1, the 100-year-old water main under the building ruptured. “Thank God it didn’t happen when we were open,” Merlino said. “Everything happens for a reason.”

Merlino said his move to South Florida more than a decade ago inspired him to think more seriously about the cheesesteak game. He frequently visits his native South Philadelphia, and said he finds “both good and bad” sandwiches. There was nothing appealing about the sandwiches near his home in Boca Raton.

“The bread in Florida sucks,” he said. Skinny Joey’s is a proof of concept, perhaps to open in Boca and franchise locations all over the country.

In 2001, Merlino was convicted on racketeering, gambling, assault, and weapons charges that got him more than 10 years in prison, followed by supervised release. He was charged with murder, but was acquitted.

“I wasn’t an altar boy,” Merlino said. “Did I gamble? Yeah. Did I receive stolen property? Yeah, we did s— like that. But all the major crimes they said we did, we didn’t do them.”

Merlino dabbled in the business as maitre d’ of the eponymous Merlino’s, a swank Italian restaurant that a friend backed for him in Boca Raton in 2014. His front-of-the-house career was short-lived. A few months before the opening, FBI agents spotted him in a cigar bar with a purported mob associate. It was declared a probation violation and he was sent back to prison. “I had to close it,” Merlino said. “I was the face of the place.” He was released four months later when an appeals court overturned the ruling.

In 2016, Merlino and 45 others were charged with gambling, loan-sharking, and bribing doctors to prescribe unnecessary prescription skin cream to patients. In 2018, with the jury deadlocked, a judge declared a mistrial. Merlino opted to plead guilty to a gambling charge rather than face a retrial and was sentenced to two years, followed by supervised release.

That brings Merlino to July 2021. He said that he has taken up golf and scores in the 80s. “I wish I would have done it when I was a kid,” he said. “I’d be on tour.”

After a couple years, Merlino got itchy to sound off. His friends urged him to find a cohost, someone young and Internet-savvy. Joe Perri, the son of a longtime Merlino friend from the Italian Market, was a content creator on various platforms, including YouTube. (Even Perri’s family calls him Lil’ Snuff; his father’s nickname is Big Snuff. When his father was a kid, a dog named Snuffy was running down Carpenter Street. “They called the dog’s name out,” Perri said. “My dad turned around, and my uncle said, ‘That’s your nickname now.’ ”)

Merlino “brought me along for the ride,” Perri, 33, said. “I’m blessed that he did and gave me the opportunity that he did.”

The two started The Skinny on YouTube in 2023. People on “social media said it would be gone after two episodes,” Merlino said. “Everybody loves us. I tell you, even my haters love me.” Episode 81 is online now.

Merlino frames his work now partly as an act of humanitarianism. “You know my situation. I’ve been in jail,” he said. “I’m not saying everybody in jail is innocent, but there’s a lot of guys in jail that are innocent, and I know what they went through. I want to get innocent people out of prison.”