The Deli Run, 2025—New York

The old cigarette ads said “I’d walk a mile for a Camel”—but this is a case of flying across the country for a sandwich.

It started with a plan for a road trip with my grandson Ben, who suggested great delis as a theme. Little by little the idea expanded into a true deli run, with two stops in New York, two in Los Angeles and then a sweep through the upper Midwest, with Ben ordering Reubens to my straight pastrami. With shared samples and occasional sides, that became our method, and here our story begins.

We started off with a family and friends gathering ‘around the corner’ at an unusual place, Moe’s, which has some of the best pastrami in Brooklyn and a story you couldn’t make up. Moe is actually Fuad Hassan, originally from Yemen. He learned the pastrami trade at David’s Brisket House, a once-Jewish delicatessen that has continued for many years in the hands of a Yemeni family, before opening Moe’s.

Moe’s has all the ‘have to haves.’ including the sandwiches and, of course, the official soda of Jewish deli-dom, Dr Brown’s Cel-Ray.

Along with that are an array of neighborhood-pleasing but not-so-traditional items including incredible milkshakes in many flavors and quite a variety of ways to combine meats and breads.

The report…

• Ben: Moe’s very good, 8/10 Reuben, 9/10 shake, 7/10 onion rings
• PH: I really rate Moe’s meats quite high; rich traditional flavor (finished in-house) and appreciate the chance to order a normal-sized sandwich—more on that later. But I have to agree on the onion rings; the flavor is good, but they’re ground onion, not real rings. My coffee milkshake was one of the best ever: not too sweet and good coffee flavor.

Day Two: Into Manhattan for Katz’s. Katz’s is like the Mona Lisa—you can find millions of people to swear it’s the best delicatessen in the world (and they’re entitled to their opinion), but its indisputably the most famous, at least in part because of the famous ‘fake orgasm’ scene staged by Meg Ryan in the movie “When Harry Met Sally.”

Despite the accumulation of nostalgia, merchandise, and an unappetizing-looking gold sandwich trophy, inside, Katz’s is pretty much as it was when I first went there, almost 70 years ago. Loud, bright, walls covered with pictures and ads and a sea of tables; like many old delis, it’s basically self-service. You get a ticket at the door, the servers at the counters mark on it (they used to use punches) and when you’re finished, you pay at the door—but heaven help you if you’ve lost your ticket!

Note the sandwich prices: this is no longer the cheap meal it once was. But all the meats are made in-house, and they are all hand-sliced which (yes, it does) makes a difference. That’s because a mechanical slicer has no way to ‘read’ the meat and adjust so that the proportion of lean and fat is correct. The cutter will usually give you a sample slice while he’s cutting, and most customers drop a buck in the tip jar. Been that way forever.

Because of the nearly-obscene size of the sandwich, I usually strip out half the meat to take home, leaving me with a still big sandwich to eat. Note that Ben made a valiant effort to keep his Reuben from deconstructing as he ate it! Katz’s wasn’t always my choice years ago, but the meat is rich and deep, even more than Moe’s.

The report…

• Ben: Katz very good, sweeter reuben than moes, 9/10 reuben, much busier and harder to navigate
• PH: For me, Katz is the best of the current pastramis, with flavor and texture chunky and consistent; the hand-cutting makes a big difference. Too bad they use soft-crusted packaged bread without real rye flavor!

The following morning, with barely time to finish digesting, we were off to Los Angeles. See you next week!