The study delves into the production of (multi-) strange hadrons in proton-proton collisions at LHC. Novel observables are proposed to distinguish between Epos4, based on core-corona separation between a thermalised QGP phase and a vacuum phase with global strangeness conservation, and Pythia 8.3, based on microscopic interactions between Lund strings that conserve strangeness locally. Correlations between a ϕ\\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \\usepackage{amsmath} \\usepackage{wasysym} \\usepackage{amsfonts} \\usepackage{amssymb} \\usepackage{amsbsy} \\usepackage{mathrsfs} \\usepackage{upgreek} \\setlength{\\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \\begin{document}$$\\phi $$\\end{document} meson and (multi-)strange hadrons are shown to be an excellent discriminator between the two types of models.