Super Bowl Pastrami - National Pastrami Day Wrap-up

Howdy there! National Pastrami Day went very well. I finally got to meet the owner of the Deli Board, Adam Mesnick. Adam invited me to come to the Deli Board for lunch to celebrate the holiday, take some pictures, and talk deli for a minute. Check out the Deli Board's site here and visit them sometimes soon - you'll be happy with your sandwich.


Adam brought me out some pickles and some broccoli cheddar soup to start. The soup was excellent - I could actually taste the broccoli, which is normally not the case in broccoli/cheddar soup. The pickles and peppers were good as well - the half sours were my favorite. The Cali cousin Reuben had a mild, not overpowering sauerkraut with a fatty pastrami that was quite baconesque...on a super soft roll. It's very hard to argue with the finished product - it's just what you want in a pastrami.

and if a bomb sandwich wasn't incentive enough....the Deli Board girls are HAWT! They are really sweet too. Say hi to them when you get your food.

That evening I also went to Miller's for dinner with a couple of friends and some people from yelp. About 8 or 9 people were there in total, which is about what I wanted. We all had pastrami...in different forms. One person got a Reuben, one person had it on an onion roll, and I got the grilled NYC special again. It was a fun time, but I didn't really take too many pictures - I apologize. Here is a link to Miller's website. I give them lots of love almost every blog entry...so you know it's good. Try it out if you haven't yet.


Last week I picked up a big pastrami for the NFC/AFC Championship games from Robert's Cornet Meat. I had some guests over and my Royal Pastrami Chef, Josh, was nice enough to cook the pastrami and slice it up for us. Please enjoy the pictures.

You can tell boxer face's attention is on the pastrami...my boxer face, mmmy my boxer face.

Royal Chef with Boxer Face (Josh and Zeus)



Finished!

I received some interesting e-mails since the past post. One of the e-mails I received was from a gentleman named John in Walla Walla, Washington. He was talking to me about his home-cured pastrami and invited me to come try it if I ever make it to the Eastern part of Washington. Here is a link to the guys blog. I know I get some readers from Washington because of my older Seattle post....maybe I'll make it Spokane soon...who knows.

Another e-mail I received from a fan was from a man named Joel who wanted to show me his "cheater" pastrami. He made the pastrami in a crock pot because he did not have access to a smoker...his pictures look pretty damn good - look at it here. The pictures really did impress me and he seemed to be a genuine pastrami fan (in his note he reminisced about Pastrami King in Queens, NYC). Thanks for the info, Joel!

This is proof that if you e-mail me I will respond...if you'd like to E-mail me send it to Pastramiking@gmail.com and follow me on Twitter @ Pastramiking and my yelp stuff is always at Pastramiking.yelp.com (if you'd like to see what else I eat besides pastrami - check yelp).

National Hot Pastrami Day - 2011

Togo's Pastrami

Happy National Pastrami Day - January 14th! I hope everyone had a great holiday season, but this is the real holiday everyone should be celebrating.

Togo's was the first place I know of celebrating National Pastrami Day. The sandwich franchise from San Jose, CA has offered coupons for pastrami sandwiches the past few years to the first 100 customers that entered the store - not a bad deal. This year, however, they are not going to offer free sandwiches. They will be offering a coupon for a free 20 oz. soda when you buy a regular sized pastrami sandwich (BOO!!!!). Well at least it's something and I give them mad props for celebrating the holiday. Langer's deli in Los Angeles mentioned the day on Facebook and was encouraging people to stop by and try their world famous #19 sandwich. I'm celebrating the holiday tomorrow with a double down of pastrami - the first sandwich will be from the Deli Board and will be enjoyed at my office at lunchtime. The double-dipper will be at Miller's later that evening (might be a half sandwich) and I set up an event on yelp to invite people to join me at Miller's - check it out here. I'm not expecting too many people to actually come and say hi to me at Miller's, but hey you never know. I will post pictures in the next post, which should be a quicker, smallish post. After the pastrami, there is going to be another yelp event I will be attending called the Klassy ladies event - so if you miss out on pastrami that evening come have some drinks with me on Broadway.

I had a visit from a big pastrami blog fan back in December. Ellen F. came from New Jersey and we got to try the Refuge and Miller's, which she wanted to try both of those after hearing me rave about the pastrami at both places. It was all pretty standard and excellent at both places - the new thing I have to tell you about the Refuge is the "Goofy Fries".


I talked to the owner of the Refuge, Matt Levin, and he told me the goofy fries were actually made up by some customer and became "perplexingly famous" to the point he had to have it on the menu. It's cheddar sauce, fries, pastrami with some garlic....yeah it's pretty heavy, but oh so good. I would recommend trying them next time you're at the Refuge - you'll love em!


The picture above is actually a homemade smoked meat from a yelper that messaged me. Jordan C. is an ex-pat from Canada that swears by Schwartz's deli in Montreal. He made his own smoked meat because he couldn't find another suitable substitute in SF. I think his favorite pastrami sandwich in the city is at Tommy's Joynt on Van Ness. Give him a yelp compliment on his profile. He deserves some praise!

In some other Bay Area pastrami news - The restaurant/deli that was going to open up as Treyf decided to change their name to "Wise Sons deli" and they are planning a launching party in February and will open to the public soon after. Check out their website - they are also going to serve a breakfast on January 22nd at Jackie's Vinoteca & Cafe on Valencia Street in SF. I'm excited for this new deli to open - so I will keep you posted as I hear things from the owners.

I also have some material in Los Angeles that I'm saving for a later post - I visited Art's deli which was good - but I'd like to get another post dedicated to the Southland - so I will be holding off on that one right now - stay tuned for another LA journey soon (Art's, Greenblatt's, pico kosher, and maybe some others - let me know what you'd like to see).