Harry G. Levine’s Pastrami Land
My friend Scott in San Francisco was kind enough to email me this article yesterday, which appeared in the summer issue of Contexts, the quarterly magazine of the American Sociological Association. In it, author Harry G. Levine delves briefly into the sociological and historical origins of deli in New York. There’s great insight here, and deli buffs will surely pick out a few tidbits.
As Levine writes:
Where did these restaurants and this culinary tradition
come from? Nobody thinks that poor Jews in Eastern Europe
ate like this, certainly not in restaurants serving huge sand-
wiches. In their current forms, some of these foods, including
the sacred pastrami, didn’t exist in the old countries. This is a
story of America and New York City.
Click on the Link Below to Download the PDF file of the article.
Pastrami Land
September 4th, 2007 at 2:09 am
Finally read through it. Great piece. I love how he describes a time when each deli had their own recipe and their own special spice mix. Sadly, I think those days are largely gone. I’d love to do a blind taste test between the various pastramis now and see how much difference there really is.
January 20th, 2010 at 11:55 am
You have a wonderful blog. I enjoyed reading it very much. Thanks keep up the good work.
July 28th, 2011 at 10:39 pm
make sure to bookmark your site.
July 29th, 2011 at 6:03 pm
Any online business marketing their own products should have blog marketing component to get more visitors out smarting competition. Blogs help to effectively interact with the customers resulting in more conversion and profit.