NYC's Five Best Pastrami Sandwiches
Including one you've probably never heard of
No doubt pastrami is the signature meat of New York. It edges out many able competitors, including pernil, jerk chicken, the all-beef frankfurter, pork al pastor, and, of course, the New York strip steak. The unctuous, slightly smoky, luscious pink meat has a unique curing process, and exactly where pastrami came from is still a mystery. It is often associated with Romania, though that country’s pastrami is more of a dry, spice-rubbed beef jerky. And the wildly popular Romanian-Jewish restaurants of a century ago certainly didn’t serve it, focusing instead on skirt steak — Sammy’s Roumanian being the only remaining example.
Pastrami is the province of lunch counters, but when did it begin? My guess is that it became popular around the 1940s, but it’s just a guess. Moreover, Katz’s, pastrami’s most famous purveyor in the world, started out in 1888 as a sausage factory (note the sign “Fabrik Wurst” on the side of the building), and probably didn’t start serving pastrami sandwiches until a later date.
The honor of serving (or at least selling) the first pastrami goes to Lithuanian immigrant Sussman Volk, who owned a Lower East Side butcher shop that used a Romanian immigrant’s recipe to produce pastrami — but probably not the kind we enjoy today. My own admittedly crazy theory is that our pastrami might have originated with Jewish butchers in Texas.
Anyway, mysteries aside, pastrami is holding its own as a meat beloved of New Yorkers and tourists alike, both in sandwiches and in creative new uses. I recently made a two-day pastrami run with a friend, retrying eight sandwiches in Brooklyn and Manhattan, and have sampled several since then. Here are the top five, in order of preference.
Katz’s Delicatessen
It’s no surprise that Katz’s produces the city’s best pastrami — it’s the focus of the entire operation. Both parts of the brisket are used, resulting in the correct relationship of lean meat to fatty, and the cure has been perfected for a century and more. The hand-carved sandwiches are not cheap ($28.95), but one sandwich is best shared by two, washed down with Cel-Ray soda. The pickles are also a delight— don’t miss the green tomatoes, providing an intense crunch. Skip the steak fries, and tip $2 ostentatiously (a “pre tip”) as you order the sandwich, to guarantee greater thickness. 205 East Houston Street, Lower East Side
Pastrami Queen
Yes, I know — PQ doesn’t hand-cut its pastrami but instead uses an electric slicer. Normally, this might keep a deli out of the top five, because manual slicing supposedly makes the pastrami tastier. But does it really? At the Queen, the increased surface area that machine slicing produces seems to ramp up the taste, and maybe the whirring blade also liquefies a little more of the fat. Anyway, this is the city’s second-best pastrami sandwich ($27), slightly smokier than Katz’s. 138 West 72nd Street, Upper West Side
S&P
The pastrami at S&P — a rebranding of Eisenberg’s Sandwich Shop, founded in 1929 — provides a glimpse of what a normal-size sandwich must have been like during its lunch counter heyday. The pastrami is hand-sliced, and sourced at Old World Provisions, in Troy, New York. The sandwich ($18) we ate was slightly less fatty than some of the others but emphatically not lean. It feels like eating a sandwich from a century ago. 174 Fifth Avenue, Flatiron
USA Brooklyn Delicatessen
As a tribute to pastrami’s vigor, places serving it in sandwiches have continued to appear over the years, just as some of the old-guard Jewish delis — venerable places like the Carnegie Deli and Jay & Lloyd’s — have disappeared. Times Square is probably the last place you’d expect a great new pastrami sandwich, but there it is at two-year-old USA Brooklyn Delicatessen. The premises is a delight: tobacco-colored booths, beehive tile floors, brass rails, with a serving scheme that has customers order at a counter and take their number to a table. The pastrami is massaged with a thicker spice rub than usual, appropriately fatty, hand-sliced, and innovatively served on marble rye ($20.95), like a sandwich from Seinfeld. 1501 Broadway, entrance on 43rd Street, Times Square
Hometown Bar-B-Que
A few years back, barbecue restaurants experimented with pastrami and Hometown led the way. Served now only at the original branch, and only Friday through Sunday, the pastrami here is definitely smokier and greasier than the usual article, which is not a bad thing — but be prepared for a flavor jolt as you bite into the sandwich. If pastrami had been invented in Texas, maybe this is what it would have been like. 454 Van Brunt Street, Red Hook
A second vote for Liebmans, and also at this point it has the most lived-in atmosphere that comes from being a part of a vibrant Jewish community rather than a sort of legacy situation. But the real winner is Moe’s on Flatbush. The fact is that Halal has given us a re-entry point to for Jewish deli that does not require taking out a mortgage. After 5 decades of eating pastrami throughout the 5 boros, my current pastrami consumption takes place almost entirely at Moe’s and I stand by the excellence of both their pastrami and brisket offerings.
Two outer borough surprises - pastrami where you don't expect pastrami - are sandwiches at Andrew's Diner on Hylan Blvd in Staten and the sole (unnamed) stand at the Diamond Lounge/Excelsior Level. The latter is delicious and hand-cut to order - reasonably priced for a ballpark meal.