Looking forward to reading your book!

The first is with inaccuracies in the review. The writer compares the quality of the skin on the pastrami from one restaurant to another. This doesn’t even make any sense. In all my beef eating life I have never seen beef with skin on it. That is because this ain’t no frickin’ chicken, and a cow’s skin is what we people call hide or leather. It doesn’t make it to the table, or the restaurant, but to a clothing store instead. So unless his jacket fell on his plate, I think the author is attempting to describe the outer part of the brisket with it’s glorious layer of fat.

The second issue I have is with the choice of breads. Quite frankly rye bread is the only respectable choice to be made at delis. Sure there have been exceptions to the rule of an onion bun for an octogenarian or a challah roll for a preschooler but seriously get with the program. What kind of self respecting food reviewer are you? You’re not doing anyone a favour with your special orders and pedestrian palate. I don’t want to know how Daniel Bolud’s burger tastes when served without the foie gras on two crisp pieces of iceberg because you’re on the atkins diet and don’t want to eat it the normal way. Your entire job as a food reviewer is to shut up and eat, at which point you are allowed to talk as much as you want. This is particularly true of the deli world. Looking at the pictures of your sandwiches, not only was it not appetizing, nor authentic, but the look of that sourdough bread almost kicked in my gag reflex. You had turned great pillars of the pastrami world into the next Subway special of the month. Either review the meat in sandwich form on rye or without bread next time. What you have done is blasphemy.

I am reminded of a time when I was a young boy (no more than eating at Wilensky’s in Montreal. Wilensky’s is famous for their “special”, a glorious combination of salami and bologna hot pressed between a bun with mustard. As a kid I detested mustard, and the thought of it made me sick. I kindly asked the gentleman behind the counter if he would make me a special without mustard. “Without mustard?” he replied. “Son put your hands up on the counter he said”. So I put my hands on the counter, at which point he picked up a chefs knife and said to me: “If you ever ask for no mustard again I will cut your hands off”. Needless to say I would never attempt to augment my order there again, and I still go back to this day. My point is, I was a child and you are a man. Man up and do it the proper way…

As ever,

Matt

Firstly having myself eaten the book I can attest to the juicyness of the meat on the cover. Secondly I fail to see the logic in your argument that Katz’s is unchallenged. Katz’s is in the city with arguably the most competitive food scene in the world. A city with deli’s a plenty offering competition. At the same time you are the Bay Area where delis are modest in number(?). Then we could get into a debate on Jewish demographics and a statistical analysis, but that’s clearly too much time to be investing in this rant. Just saying…. Thanks for your enthusiasm!

Daniel

They take that exceptional pastrami layer it on rye cut at an angle, so as to maximize the crustiness, top it with cole slaw, russian dressing, and a slice of swiss. I don’t even like cole slaw or russian dressing. It doesn’t matter.

Langer’s pickles, however, are often dissapointingly new.