187 replies to this topic

[weinoo]

After a pseudo-cane, what could be better?



And today's pastrami was a thing of beauty.

[heidih]

Truly a thing of beauty! Are those some sort of pickled green tomato under the cucumber pickles?

PS: Gotta love the Diet Pepsi next to the tower of fatty meat ;)

[LindaK]

Everything does look beautiful. Great pickles. I prefer my pastrami sliced more thinly but it still looks fabulous.

[weinoo]

Truly a thing of beauty! Are those some sort of pickled green tomato under the cucumber pickles?

PS: Gotta love the Diet Pepsi next to the tower of fatty meat ;)

Full-sour, pickled green tomato indeed!

Everything does look beautiful. Great pickles. I prefer my pastrami sliced more thinly but it still looks fabulous.

That's the hand sliced pastrami - but it's so tender, it doesn't matter.

[Broken English]

My lunch from a few weeks ago ...




God it was good.

[weinoo]

Looks like we have the same taste .

Gotta ask - did you eat the WHOLE sandwich?

[JAZ]

I might be alone in this, but I found the sandwiches at Katz's (I had pastrami, which looked much like Mitch's sandwich picture above) to be very disappointing. Yes, the pastrami was excellent, but a giant pile of meat on sliced bread is not my idea of a great sandwich. I prefer sandwiches with some nuance and balance.

[David A. Goldfarb]

The subtlety and complexity are in the flavor and texture of the meat. The bread is a formality. Anything else is adornment.

[weinoo]

I might be alone in this, but I found the sandwiches at Katz's (I had pastrami, which looked much like Mitch's sandwich picture above) to be very disappointing. Yes, the pastrami was excellent, but a giant pile of meat on sliced bread is not my idea of a great sandwich. I prefer sandwiches with some nuance and balance.

Unless, of course, it's a pastrami sandwich. The nuance and balance comes from the mustard and pickle. And the CelRay ... .

[Pam R]

Right - I think it's against the law in some places to have anything but mustard on pastrami (or corn beef). And it should be on rye.

[JAZ]

The subtlety and complexity are in the flavor and texture of the meat. The bread is a formality. Anything else is adornment.

Then why not just order a big pile of meat?

[David A. Goldfarb]

Then why not just order a big pile of meat?

It would be uncivilized, of course.

[weinoo]

And what else would you put on pastrami?

[Tri2Cook]

Then why not just order a big pile of meat?

He did... they serve it in an edible napkin.

[patrickamory]

JAZ, I actually think the pile of pastrami at Katz's (and other comparable places like Schwartz's or Langer's) to be in perfect proportion to the bread and mustard.

Places like Carnegie Deli or Stage Deli take it to the extreme for tourists, but for me the Katz's sandwich WORKS. And I'm not a fan of unbalanced sandwiches. Of course, everyone's mileage varies.

[Broken English]

Looks like we have the same taste .

Gotta ask - did you eat the WHOLE sandwich?

Well I couldn't just leave some on the plate, could I? The idea that I could have left any seemed so far fetched at the time. Mind you, it was the only thing I ate that day.

[rlibkind]

And it should be on rye.

Rye is my usual, bit iirc from childhood in the 50's, "club rolls" were quite an acceptable alternative.

[Pam R]

And it should be on rye.

Rye is my usual, bit iirc from childhood in the 50's, "club rolls" were quite an acceptable alternative.

My family had a kosher deli for a few years and on occasion, somebody would order a pastrami on white with mayo. A shanda.

I've been to Katz's once and thought the sandwich was great. The knishes, not so much.

[weinoo]

My family had a kosher deli for a few years and on occasion, somebody would order a pastrami on white with mayo. A shanda.

I've been to Katz's once and thought the sandwich was great. The knishes, not so much.

Funny, that's exactly what I said to my wife. And it's doubly sad about the knishes, since Yonah Schimmel's is right down the block.

[patrickamory]

And it should be on rye.

Rye is my usual, bit iirc from childhood in the 50's, "club rolls" were quite an acceptable alternative.

And in fact, at Katz's, I highly recommend the brisket on the club roll! Pastrami on the rye.

Get samples, tip well, and order your meat juicy.

[KatieLoeb]

My family had a kosher deli for a few years and on occasion, somebody would order a pastrami on white with mayo. A shanda.

I've been to Katz's once and thought the sandwich was great. The knishes, not so much.

Funny, that's exactly what I said to my wife. And it's doubly sad about the knishes, since Yonah Schimmel's is right down the block.

A state of affairs I've often wondered about too. How do you have lousy doughy bland knishes when the temple of all Knishness is a stone's throw away?? Never made sense to me. You could send a busboy every morning to pick up the order or have it walked over and hand delivered. What's up with that??

[threestars]

My lunch from a few weeks ago ...

God it was good.

Wow. That is such a big sandwich! :D I'm craving for it now. Will make one tonight.

[weinoo]

My family had a kosher deli for a few years and on occasion, somebody would order a pastrami on white with mayo. A shanda.

I've been to Katz's once and thought the sandwich was great. The knishes, not so much.

Funny, that's exactly what I said to my wife. And it's doubly sad about the knishes, since Yonah Schimmel's is right down the block.

A state of affairs I've often wondered about too. How do you have lousy doughy bland knishes when the temple of all Knishness is a stone's throw away?? Never made sense to me. You could send a busboy every morning to pick up the order or have it walked over and hand delivered. What's up with that??

Very interesting, right. It certainly looks like Katz's uses a "commercial" type of knish, the ones you see on pretzel/hot dog/knish carts all over the city, probably from a company like Gabila's. They can be good, but they really have to be prepared properly, and I don't know if sitting on a warm griddle all day is the best way to do that.

I would venture a guess that economics enters into it.

Of course, maybe there's an age-old feud at the bottom of it all .

[patrickamory]

Is Yonah Schimmel's really still good? I haven't been there in probably ten years, but I thought the consensus was that it had gone downhill.

[Fat Guy]

It's not entirely sensible to believe the things that people at restaurants tell you, however I should note that I have been told repeatedly by several people at Katz's that their supplier for the round knishes is Yonah Schimmel's and that for the square ones it is a commercial provider whose name I've never recognized. Everybody is aware, correct, that there are two types of knishes on offer at Katz's, and that only the round ones are worth bothering with?

[KatieLoeb]

Aha! I never noticed the round ones. I was with someone that had ordered one of the square ones and tasted it. Might as well have been batter dipped wallpaper paste. What flavor are the round Yonah Schimmel ones?

edited to add:

A bit of research has yielded the following, off the Katz's online menu.

Knishes (square) 3.45
Potato only

Knishes (round) 3.95
Potato, Broccoli, Sweet Potato, Kasha

Next time I'll know...

Edited by KatieLoeb, 02 September 2011 - 06:11 PM.

[Fat Guy]

I'm not absolutely promising they're from Yonah Schimmel, I'm just saying I've been told that. There are usually several available at Katz's in the round format: potato, sweet potato, kasha and broccoli. It may be a complete coincidence that those correspond to four of the eight types normally available at Yonah Schimmel.

[philadining]

Is Yonah Schimmel's really still good? I haven't been there in probably ten years, but I thought the consensus was that it had gone downhill.

FWIW, I had a couple of Yonah Schimmel knishes (directly from the Yonah Schimmel shop, not from Katz's) maybe 6 months ago, and they were delicious.

Also, this is probably obvious, but I once made the mistake of ordering a pastrami sandwich from a waitress, rather than going up to the counter and doing the routine, chatting with the cutter, asking for juicy, sampling, tipping, etc. Unsurprisingly, I got an OK sandwich, but not nearly as transcendent as I've gotten many times before.


Ordered from a waitress at a table.


Ordered from the cutter at the counter.


At that same table-service lunch, my friend ordered a roast beef sandwich. He was warned that it was cold and rare, but he was unprepared for it to be SO rare, really quite raw in parts, with large expanses of fat, not very appealing overall. Amusingly, an older gentleman in a Katz's shirt was working the room, saying hello to everyone eating at tables. He came over to us, asked where we were from, told a few funny anecdotes, then glanced at my friend's barely-touched sandwich. He chuckled, said "wow, somebody ordered wrong" and walked away... Yes, it's true, I guess, but I kind of expected a little more sympathy...

Anyway, I'll forgive them because the pastrami is so good. And I'll always go to the counter and order my own meat.

[Fat Guy]

There are advocates of counter service and advocates of table service. I've been through phases of preferring each. Especially when I was younger and there were still culturally appropriate waiters, you could sometimes do better with table service: the guys at the counter had more devotion to the waiters than to the counter customers, it seemed to me. And especially if you made a connection with the waiter, and specified that you wanted fatty or whatever, that preference would be conveyed and honored. Plus, they told great jokes (at some point I may be persuaded to recount the pickle-slicer joke). These days, I prefer the counter because the old-guard waiters all seem to be gone. But I imagine it's still possible to work the table-service angle. I will say, however, that I've done some experimenting with the tipping situation and have never really noticed a difference in the end product. Socializing with the counter guys and showing an interest in the quality of your meat seems to be the big determinant of outcome.

[weinoo]

Is Yonah Schimmel's really still good? I haven't been there in probably ten years, but I thought the consensus was that it had gone downhill.

Yes, they are still good. But everything has gone downhill in the last ten years, hasn't it?