NYC: Noms and stuff

October 10, 2014 • 9:16 am

Here are some random photos from the Lower East Side, where I’m staying; they include, of course, the all important Report on Noms.

Noms were procured at the famous Katz’s, perhaps the most famous delicatessen in New York. It’s on the corner of Houston and Ludlow Streets, and has been in operation since 1888.  That is 126 years!.  Here it is, an unprepossessing sight—but what culinary delights lie within!

 

Katz outside

Over the years (I’ve been going here since 1971), Katz’s has become increasingly famous, largely because that is where the famous “fake orgasm” scene took place in the movie “When Harry Met Sally.”  Tourists flock here, and at the left, hanging from the ceiling, is a sign with an arrow pointing to the table where Meg Ryan showed Billy Crystal how women fake orgams.

Katzs inside

What do you get at Katz’s? Pastrami on rye with mustard, of course, though corned beef is nearly as good and the hot dogs are creditable. They also have some of the best fries around, though I didn’t get any on this visit as they were being made when I arrived. (I couldn’t have been able to finish them anyway.)

To get a sandwich, you line up in front of one of the famous “countermen” (they’re all men), who hand-slice your meat from a big hunk of pastrami or corned beef.  I asked the greeter who made the best sandwhiches, and he pointed to Juan, third counterman from the right.  When I stepped up for my order, I put two bucks in his tip cup, and asked, as food critic Josh Ozersky had advised me, for a “pastrami, first cut, juicy.” Juan went back to the steamer and came back with a whole pastrami: apparently the first cut really is a first cut.  While waiting for my sandwich, he slipped me a plate containing several slices of the delectable viand.

The sandwich came with a good ration of half-sour and dill pickles, and I picked up a Dr. Brown’s Cel-Ray Tonic (yes, a celery-flavored soda), the perfect beverage to wash down the salty pastrami.

Counter

And voilà: one of the world’s great meals. There have been kings who haven’t eaten so well!

Lunch 1

The view above doesn’t give you an idea of the sheer volume of the meat, so I took a cross-sectional view of half of the sandwich, below. The pastrami was flavorful and full of juice; Josh didn’t steer me wrong. It was in fact the best pastrami sandwich I’d ever had.

Sandwich
You call that a sandwich? Now THIS is a sandwich!!!

After lunch I strolled the two blocks to Economy Candy, a Jewish-run store specializing in hard-to-find sweets or the candy bars of your youth. The store is mesmerizing:

E Candy inside 2

Here’s a display of hard-to-find American candy. Who remembers the Mallo-Mar, the Zagnut bar, or the Sugar Daddy caramel sucker, responsible for the loss of many an American filling?

Economy candy

Economy is also one of the few sources of Fox’s U-Bet chocolate syrup, one of the three ingredients of the classic New York beverage, the egg cream, which contains neither eggs nor cream.

Fox's

My own haul was a big bar of chocolate-covered halvah (Joyva brand, of course):

Halvah

Here’s part of the Lower East side, where my granddad lived after he immigrated from Russia. This is a segment of Orchard Street, and the buildings were once all stores or tenements housing poor Jewish families. Traces of the Jewish past remain, as with Beckelstein’s fabric store on the right. Now the area is becoming gentrified with Starbucks and frozen yogurt shops. So it goes.

LES

Finally, a New York hipster I saw on the street:

Hipster

 

~

57 thoughts on “NYC: Noms and stuff”

  2. Is that a normal pickle ration in a traditional New York deli? That is a HELL of a lot of pickles.

  3. I know this is gonna sound silly, but the most delicious thing described in that whole piece were the half-sour dill pickles. A half-sour dill pickle form a New York-style deli is a rare treat. It is what cucumbers aspire top be. We have a few decent delicatessen knock-offs in South Florida, it is the 7th borough after all, but nothing like Katz’s I’m sure.

    1. Any recommendations for a decent deli in South Florida, particularly Boca area? Recent transplant from the North missing the good stuff (but enjoying the weather).

      1. TooJay’s Gourmet Deli
        3013 Yamato Rd, Boca Raton

        I grew up in Boca Raton. I practically lived off of Too Jay’s Dill Chicken Salad.
        There is also Ben’s Kosher Deli, Restaurant and Caterers on Clint Moore road.
        Too Jay’s is more of a restaurant with a deli menu.
        Ben’s is probably more like the real thing . . . but I’ve never lived in New York so my opinion is unqualified as to which is more authentically New York.

        1. TooJay’s (a chain) is very good. Try Flakowitz. There is one in Boca on Federal Highway (which I have not been to). I live near the one on Hagen Ranch and Boynton Beach Blvd. Great for Breakfast also.

          1. And there used to Wolfie’s (closed in 2001); and Wolfie Cohen’s Rascal House (closed in 2008) much to my chagrin.

          2. Thanks for all the recommendations – something for me to check out. I didn’t know this *website* has so many readers in Boca. We should open a local fan club or better yet, get Professor Ceiling Cat over here. I may be able to pull some strings at the university here.

  4. That sandwich looks insanely good. The last time I was in NYC I got a Broadway Danny Rose at the Carnegie Deli and quite stupidly ate the whole thing on the way to a tennis match in Central Park, where I lost to a much inferior opponent.

  6. The hipster looks like the “illegitimate” child of Reverand Jim from Taxi and Kramer from Seinfeld.
    “JERRY!!!”
    🙂

  7. Who remembers the Mallo-Mar, the Zagnut bar, or the Sugar Daddy caramel sucker, responsible for the loss of many an American fillingpancreas?

    FIFY

  8. U-Bet is available in my supermarkets, and with a SodaStream I can make fresh fizzy water to any degree of fizz I want. So egg creams are no problem.

    1. Egg cream is a new one on me and I had to look it up on Wikipedia.
      Kind of similar to what I know as an ice cream spider which is ice cream and fizzy whatever. Vanilla and coke is not bad.

        1. Yep, it’s an Aussie thing.

          An ice cream soda or float (United States, United Kingdom, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa and East Asia), coke float (United Kingdom, Canada, New Zealand) or Snowball (New Zealand), or spider (Australia and New Zealand),

          6. Hey – are we brothers then? Dad told me it was called a spider because it came served in a jug big enough for eight straws (spidery looking with some imagination) so everyone could have some.

  9. Fox’s U-Bet chocolate syrup can be found in certain Publix stores in my town. I was introduced to the stuff by a now ex-girlfriend, a nice Jewish girl.

  10. Loooong – / long – time licorice / black Necco wafer aficionado here. Other flavors of its wafers as well, of course.

    Still able to procure them locally for grandkiddos’ surprizes but only if diligently searched out.

    Chef and connoisseur, Mr Michael Bagale of Chicago’s Alinea, prepares a “ too sweet ” Necco wafer – based dessert: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6aEB0xWDXjM

    Blue

      1. I ate them all. The black one were fun because they turned your tongue black (and some on the teeth).

      1. Oooo, curiously coincidental that this should be stated just now: only yesterday I had had delivered to some o’ those same grandkiddos’ doorstep a passel / a parcel of Gustaf’s ( Dutch though that ‘ne be ) Double Salt Licorice !

        Response ? Still awaiting that from … … The Three. All under nine years of age … … soooo I guess I shall see, won’t I ?!

        Blue

      2. Some of the ad stuff isn”t too bad but some of it tastes like soap. A friend brought me some back when he had to go there for business.

        I much prefer the dutch DZ (Dubbel Zout). I eat so much of it that it makes me all red.

  15. You sure can’t get a pastrami sandwich that looks like that anywhere around here. My eyes are tearing up.

    The “best” deli around these parts (supposed to be authentic NY deli too) serves a pastrami sandwich that looks exactly the reverse of that one. The bread, both top and bottom, are about as thick as the meat on the Katz sandwich, and the pastrami is about the thickness of Katz’s bread. And the pastrami doesn’t look anything like that.

  16. My goodness what a sandwich! Love the photos.

    The 100,000 grand bar was one of my favorites as a kid in the 70’s.

    On that note, I learned fairly recently that my favorite cereal as a kid “Quisp” which had a fairly short run and was discontinued in the early 70’s, has become available again via the magic of the internet.

    I ordered some, hadn’t tasted it since I was around 9 years old, and it tasted exactly the same, just as I’d remembered it, and just as great! I felt like a kid again sitting at my old kitchen table.

    Anyway, I gotta get myself to New York again!

  17. Zagnut bars are still around. They are now made by Hershey.

    The Joyva chocolate halvah is one of my favorites, but a big fresh chunck of oily marble halvah from a deli was to die for.

  18. How do you eat a sandwich of that size? Is it eat some meat or is there a technique for un hinging ones jaw?

  21. Looks beautiful – the pastrami, the lovely pickles, and ooh! a real fabric store!

    You can probably find that brand of halvah locally at Middle Eastern grocery stores. They carry it here in Tucson, and the distributor is in Chicago.

    I’d have been looking for the “Pink Owl” bubblegum cigars. Haven’t seen them in years.

  22. Fabric stores used to be a real downfall for me…we won’t talk about the yards of fabric secreted in my sewing room…Not all that many good fabric stores left.

  23. Looks like some decent rye bread too. Too often the bread is a sop for people who regularly eat white bread, and has no substance.

  24. You can get a fairly big selection of old-fashioned candy at the Cracker Barrel restaurant. I think the one closest to Hyde Park is near 183rd St and Harlem in Tinley Park.

  25. That’s one hell of a sandwich, but not as thick as some of the pastrami sandwiches I’ve seen here or elsewhere. The only way to eat them, I think, is to eat 3/4 of the meat, and only then get started on the sandwich.

    Celery soda? I think if I ever eat at Katz’s I’ll pass on that.

    1. I think the trick is to be good & hungry. Don’t eat all day then eat that. Yeah, it’s probably hard on the body, but so satisfying!

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