Rick's Steaks serves its last at terminal

Rick Olivieri was working the grill yesterday, just as he'd been for 25 years.

The third-generation crown prince of cheesesteaks was wielding his spatula with the usual speed and grace. He was flipping skin-thin slices of meat, shoveling deep into the translucent mountain range of diced onions, and, with a flick of the wrist as practiced and precise as Paul Newman's in The Hustler, delivering the salty, juicy, greasy goods into a cradle of warm bread.

His dimples showing, he palled around with the regulars, explained the meaning of "wid" to first-timers, and high-fived his fellow tenants in the Reading Terminal Market. And if you didn't know that today is the end of a nasty landlord-tenant battle that cost Olivieri $310,000 in legal fees and resulted in the eviction of Rick's Steaks from the spot where he first started working with his father in 1982, you'd never have guessed. For nothing in his demeanor revealed the truth that he was bitter and sad and leaving a place that's as close to his heart as a place can be.

"For the first three months of this ordeal," he said, "I didn't sleep at all."

Tuesday night, however, he had no trouble. What's done is done. He lost. They won.

"What are you going to do?" he said with a shrug.

Beginning at 9:30 a.m. yesterday, regulars made the pilgrimage for their last lunch at Olivieri's hallowed spot, with its narrow counters dissecting the wall of windows overlooking 12th Street. They took one last look at the photos of Bill Cosby and Al Roker and the huge sign telling one version of the history (it's disputed, long story, never mind) of how Olivieri's ancestors invented the cheesesteak in 1932.

"It's a shame what happened here," City Councilman Bill Green said as he stood in the crowd of two dozen customers waiting to order at noon. Green, a childhood friend of Olivieri's, criticized Reading Terminal's private, nonprofit board for voting to evict Olivieri, then spending $700,000 to fight him in court when he sued, alleging conspiracy and breach of contract.

The origins of the conflict lie in management's decision several years ago to modernize leases and operating policies to make the market more competitive.