Two Perfect Days of Eating
Deep Dives
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Katz's Delicatessen
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The article opens with Reichl's food stroll beginning at Katz's, describing her obsession with their pastrami and the sensory experience of the historic deli. Katz's has a rich 136-year history as a Lower East Side institution, with fascinating stories about Jewish immigration, the pastrami-making tradition, and its cultural significance in New York food history.
When you’re a food writer there are two questions people are always tossing at you. The first is what you want for your last meal. The other thing they want to know is where you would eat for a perfect day if you could go to any restaurants in the world.
I won’t tell you what I’d eat for my last meal because I’ve never answered the same way twice. But I will offer up one answer I gave to the second question. Ten years ago an Australian magazine asked what I would eat on a single day if I could go anywhere in the world. I wouldn’t respond the same way today, but here’s that answer.
If you want to know more about these experiences you can read about breakfast at Hyotei here, lunch in Sperlonga here and Nico’s here. As for Gray’s, just check my Instagram feed; I eat there a lot.
And here is one way to have a perfect day in New York.
Much of my first novel Delicious! is set in downtown New York, and when it came out my publisher thought it would be nice if I’d take a few people on a food stroll through the Lower East Side.
I have to say it was one of the most delicious few hours of my life.
May 2014
The highlight of my weekend was a stroll around the Lower East Side, visiting my favorite food places with a group of new friends. We began at Katz’s because I am obsessed with their irresistible pastrami.
Just walking into that enormous room packed with raucous people makes me insanely happy. The walls throb with that intense scent of smoke, salt, pepper and garlic, and then, somewhere, like a reverberating backnote, the richness of beef.
Afterward we went down the street to Russ and Daughters, where we ate - what else? lox and fantastic herring, while Niki Russ Federman told great stories about growing up in the shop she now runs.
Then it was on to Deluxe Food Market, a fantastic Chinese market where we feasted on roast duck and the most delicious roasted pork belly. Not to mention tendon, with its wonderful texture and scallion chicken so soft and silky it literally melted in our mouths. We ended with their spectacular just-made char shiu.
On to Di Palo’s, one of my favorite shops
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