Sandwich Heaven at Katz

It’s been nearly a year since we were in New York and I still haven’t written about Ippudo or Katz. Disgraceful.

Shame on me as these were the two places we really wanted to eat at, and I’m glad we did as they lived up to expectations. 

Does Katz really need any introduction, it seems to have been blogged about a million times. It’s a regular on TV from Man v Food, Tony Bourdain and even on films, yeah we know which one.

This is the benchmark for all New York Deli’s and apart from Russ and Daughters, which we never got to try sadly, this is probably the most popular deli in the world.

You can either do table service along the side walls or queue and risk trying to get a seat, which could be difficult as Katz is always full and I mean full.

Now you could say that when a joint has so much publicity its either a PR department on overdrive or there is actually some truth in it and every journo, film crew are just jumping on the bandwagon.

Well it is true, this place not only has the character, the atmosphere but the food delivers in droves.

Now coming from a small, white middle class town, which hasn’t changed that much since the 70’s, I am not an expert on Jewish food, even though I am Jewish. Something I found out late in life. It’s a long story and only one to be told late at night after a bottle of rum.

But as a lover of a good sandwich, Katz’s Pastrami on Rye ranks up there with the best in the world, lovely juicy smoked thinly sliced beef with a light dash of mustard and served with a pickle on the side. Now it doesn’t get better than that.

Now I’m a greedy fucka, really greedy. I have this belief that when you are full you just have to eat more and it pushes what you have already eaten down, therefore freeing up some more valuable space for more food.

Katz however beat me, I couldn’t finish my sarnie. I was a little shocked to be told, but when you get this massive mound of bread and meat put on a plate in front of you. You gulp and gulp we did.

How many briskets do they smoke in a day, how many pastrami sandwiches do they make in a week, how many Rueben’s get eaten every day in this institution of sandwich heaven.

I’d really love to have hung around for a few months and eaten everything off that menu and if I’d have taken that job I could well have, but that’s a different timeline and it’s passed now.

Katz deserves all the praise it gets and yes it is one place where it deserves the hype. Truly brilliant.  Until the next time.