Wall Street Journal Names Katz's: the Best Pastrami Sandwiches!

The Best Pastrami Sandwiches in New YorkWhere to find the juiciest and tastiest pastrami sandwiches in New York City.

1. One of the last relics of Jewish immigrant culture on the Lower East Side, the 128-year-old Katz’s Delicatessen now shares the neighborhood with fashionable hotels and pricey boutiques but is still a major tourist magnet in its own right. Katz's is one of the few delis in town that still hand-cuts the pastrami (the cutters themselves, many from the neighborhood, are part of the charm).

Locals and out-of-towners alike shuffle through the cafeteria-like lines in the massive wood-paneled dining room, plastered with celebrity photos and thank-you letters and old signs (one for the deli’s World War II promotional campaign, ‘Send a Salami to Your Boy in the Army,’ dangles from the ceiling).         

2. Dickson’s Farmstand Meats is a sliver of a gourmet butcher shop in the middle of Chelsea Market and has just a few stools at the counter.

3.A tiny, bare-bones Upper East Side kosher deli, with a handful of metal tables and bustling takeout counter, Pastrami Queen has a devoted following who come for pastrami made on site following, according to manager Jack Turner, an ‘age-old recipe.’  

        

4. At the 2nd Ave. Deli, they serve a mean pastrami sandwich, with thin, buttery folds of dark-red meat (it’s smoked and cured by A to Z Kosher Meat Products, and made from the well-marbled     

navel end).

5. A legendary kosher eatery for 50 years, 2nd Ave. Deli closed in 2006, a decade after the death of its beloved owner, Abe Lebewohl. His two young nephews reopened the business a year or so later on East 33rd St. There are now two branches, nearly exact replicas of each other.