LA (and Maybe the World's) Best Pastrami: Ugly Drum at Smorgasburg

If you haven't been to Smorgasburg, you need to make a beeline there on your next free Sunday. Smorgasburg is a food fair that originated in Brookly and opened in LA in June. It includes around 50 vendors; some are connected to food trucks or stores, but many are only available at Smorgasburg.

The festival is a food lover's dream with vendors selling a wide range of great food from Summer Crab Company's fried soft shelled crab sandwiches to pork belly paratha tacos from Goa Taco to Wanderlust's fantastic ube ice cream.

But the best thing I've had so far in the entire place is Ugly Drum's pastrami. They serve one thing. Pastrami on rye with a squirt of mustard if you want it. This pastrami is amazing. The flavor is as rich as any I've had, but the texture is more akin to fat marbled, barbecued brisket; it has that melt-in-your mouth quality. This is the best pastrami I've ever had, better than Langer's, better than Katz's. Go eat it!

Smorgasburg takes place downtown at the Alameda Produce Market on Sundays from 10 to 5. It's shockingly uncrowded, and there is plentiful parking at the lot at Alameda and Bay Streets that is free for the first two hours.

NY Deli Dogfight: Katz's vs. Carnegie

A few years ago, on one of my annual pilgrimages to Manhattan, I evaluated the merits of Katz's Deli and found that, while very good, it came up short in comparison to LA's own Langer's. This year, I took the opportunity to do meals at Katz's and its uptown competitor the Carnegie Deli. The verdict: Katz's by a mile.

First let's talk pastrami. A Katz's pastrami sandwich (pictured) may not capture the perfect gestalt of a Langer's, but it's still a pile of excellent pastrami, tender, soft and nicely spiced. Carnegie, on the other hand, has chewy, bland pastrami, unworthy of such a noteworthy institution.

That being said, I grabbed a reuben at both and preferred Carnegie's, even with their pastrami. The funny thing is, I didn't recall Katz's even having a reuben back when I lived in New York. I had thought Katz's was kosher, or at least "kosher style," which would prohibit the mixing of meat and dairy that you have on a reuben. In any case, the Katz's reuben was not grilled, rather the cheese and sauerkraut are microwaved and put on the reuben with a sauce that I can only characterize as odd. It seemed like a sweet tomato relish of some type. As the kids on the internet say, this was an "epic fail" at recreating this great sandwich. Carnegie does an open face reuben, piled high with sauerkraut and swiss cheese and accompanied by the traditional Russian dressing. It wasn't the best reuben I've had, but at least it was a recognizable form of the sandwich.

Sides at both restaurants were good. Chopped liver, pickles and a potato knish at Katz's were exactly what you want. Beer battered onion rings at Carnegie were also quite good. I had an egg cream at both delis and Katz's was better with a good balance; Carnegie's was a bit too sweet for my taste.

Prices are obscenely expensive at both institutions, but that's New York for you. Sandwiches at Katz's run $15 to $18. The reuben at Carnegie was in the $25 range with an additional, totally gratuitous, $3 charge for sharing the monster sandwich.

In the end though, Katz's may not know how to make a reuben, but they serve better food, and that's why they get the win in this deli challenge.

Katz's Deli
205 East Houston Street
New York, NY 10002
(212) 254-2246

Carnegie Deli
854 7th Avenue
New York, NY 10019
(212) 757-2245

The Great Pastrami Debate: Katz's vs. Langer's

I lived in Manhattan for three years in the mid to late '90s. Since then, I've been back only sporadically. When I lived in New York, I occasionally ventured out to Katz's famous deli on Houston, but on a recent trip back to NYC, it occurred to me that I had not been to Katz's since I lived in New York, which means I had not been since before I moved to LA and tried Langer's. Since one of Angelenos' favorite pastimes is telling New Yorkers that Langer's is better than Katz's, I thought I should go back to Katz's with that comparison in mind. So, I headed to Houston Street, took a ticket and ordered the Katz's equivalent of my Langer's order: the straight up pastrami on rye.

Katz's makes a great pastrami sandwich, no doubt about it, but I'm proud to report to all you LA civic pride advocates that Langer's is indeed better. I view Katz's meat as the best of the deli pastrami. It is well spiced, tender and full of spicy, meaty flavor, but it is ultimately a great version of the same pastrami you get at every deli in the City. Langer's, on the other hand, is an entirely different beast. It has very little in common with traditional, sliced deli pastramis. It's moist and thick and almost more of a meat entree than a cold cut. Biting into a Katz's sandwich is extremely satisfying, but biting into a Langer's sandwich is a near religious experience.

And then there is the bread. At Katz's, the bread is a throwaway. A mere container for the meat, Katz's bread is limp and flavorless; it's clearly not there to be appreciated, it's there to keep your fingers from getting greasy. At Langer's, in contrast, the soft, crispy crusted bread is as much a part of the sandwich experience as the meat. That is the wonderful gestalt of the Langer's sandwich; the thick and tender, perfectly spiced meat contrasted with the fresh, crusty bread is what makes it superior.

The one place where Katz's clearly wins, though, is the pickles. Langer's pickles are floppy and sad. Katz's gives you both a sour and a half-sour with your sandwich. The half sour is not as good as some I've had, but the Katz's sour pickle is everything you want in a pickle. It's salty, juicy and deeply sour.

So give me a good old Langer's sandwich any day, but I'll take it with a sour pickle from Katz's.

All About Bay Cities

I've long been a fan of the wonderful Italian sandwiches of Bay Cities Deli in Santa Monica. The Bay Cities Godmother, loaded with meat, oil and vinegar and stuffed onto a freshly made, crispy crusted loaf of their housemade bread, satisfied a hero sandwich craving when I first moved her from Manhattan. Now, I'm guessing that if I ate at my old sandwich haunts in New York, I would miss the Godmother. I'm also a sucker for the meatball sandwich, with all of that glorious sauce loaded onto that same fresh bread.

The big disadvantage of Bay Cities is that it's in Santa Monica, and while it makes an ultra-convenient beach picnic, it's not always easy to satisfy a craving, and I've long wished for a good grinder east of Fairfax. That's why I was excited to hear about the new deli All About the Bread on Melrose at La Brea which I was told made similar sandwiches to Bay Cities.

It turned out that these were not merely similar sandwiches. The primary meat sandwich at All About the Bread is the Godfather. As with Bay Cities, it can be ordered with "the works" which includes hot peppers. And it is served on housemade bread that is remarkably similar in appearance to the bread in a certain Santa Monica deli. Why not just call the place Inland Cities? Anyway, I would caution the proprietors of this new haunt to be on the lookout for angry lawyer letters in the new future.

But how do these sandwiches compare to the Bay? They are good sandwiches and I'm glad to have an outlet for them closer than Lincoln Boulevard, but they aren't quite up to the Bay Cities standard. The Godmother was tasty and I liked that it had prosciutto, which added a nice hint of cured meat. The All About the Bread bread is crunchier than Bay Cities' version, but it lack some of the nice, yeasty flavor of the Bay Cities bread.

The meatballs and marinara on the meatball sandwich were nicely flavored, though I would have liked more sauce. Still, I didn't dig it quite as much as the giant Bay Cities meatball.

Of the sandwiches I tried, the one that I thought All About the Bread did better than Bay Cities was the caprese, which had a good balance of mozzarella, tomato and basil and came together well. The caprese benefits from the somewhat thinner bread at All About.

It may seem like a blatant copy of the Bay Cities formula, but hey, it's a successful formula and I'm glad to get a good Italian sandwich closer to home.

All About the Bread
7111 Melrose Ave
Los Angeles, CA 90046
(323) 930-8989

Langer's Hashes it Out

My principal rule at Langer's is don't stray from pastrami on rye. I know the #19 (pastrami with swiss and coleslaw) has its followers, but for me, you can't beat straight pastrami on their crunchy rye bread; at least, though, the #19 is still pastrami-based. With the lone exception of the chopped liver, which I get a hankering for every now and then, straying from pastrami on the Langer's menu can only result in heartache, tedium and regret.

A few weeks ago, though, on a Chowhound post, many respected Hounds heartily recommended the corned beef hash. This was intriguing. Corned beef, after all, is a close relative of pastrami, so it certainly stood to reason that this could be an acceptable menu alternative.

Well, less than a week after reading the post, I found myself at Langer's around breakfast time. Normally, I would eschew our cultural food norms and simply get a pastrami on rye for breakfast, but I remembered the hash, so I ordered it, along with matzoh brie.

The hash was all you would expect from the meat masters at Langers. It was full of crispy, greasy morsels of chopped corned beef, spiced with salt and parsley (and maybe some other herbs). There may have been a few potatoes interspersed in it, but not enough to notice. It was a revelation in hash, by far the best I've had. The matzoh brie was unexciting but it served its purpose of soaking up some of the grease that came with the hash.

Corn beef hash at Langer's - check it out!

Langer's Delicatessen
Sorry, not giving an address here. If you don't know where Langer's is, you really shouldn't be reading food blogs.

Reubens and Toffee Bars at Brent's

So after many years of meaning to go, I finally made it to Brent's Deli in Northridge. Yes, the pastrami reuben was excellent, with pastrami that was certainly better than any in town save Langer's. Was the reuben, itself, the best in town? I'd have to do a side by side with Nate'n Al's to be sure, but it was damn good.

I expected a great reuben after everything I'd heard about Brent's, but what really took me by surprise was the toffee bar, a sort of brownie/blondie like bar filled with toffee bits, topped with chocolate chips and other good stuff. It was dense, sweet, chocolaty and chewy. I bought one to take home and immediately wished I had picked up two or three at least. Oh yes, I'll be back to try more of everything.

Brent's Delicatessen & Restaurant
19565 Parthenia Street
Northridge CA 91324
(818) 886-5679