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).