Katz's Delicatessen
Based on Wikipedia: Katz's Delicatessen
"I'll have what she's having."
Those six words, delivered by a deadpan Estelle Reiner to a waitress after watching Meg Ryan fake an orgasm at a corner table, turned a 101-year-old deli into a movie star. The scene from the 1989 romantic comedy When Harry Met Sally is arguably the most famous restaurant moment in film history, and it happened at Katz's Delicatessen on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. That table is still there, marked with a sign that reads: "Where Harry met Sally... hope you have what she had! Enjoy!"
But here's the thing about Katz's: it didn't need the movie. For more than a century before Rob Reiner pointed a camera at his mother (that was Estelle Reiner, the director's mom, who delivered the famous line), this place had been feeding immigrants, soldiers, actors, comedians, and ordinary New Yorkers looking for what many consider the finest pastrami sandwich in the country.
The Numbers Tell a Story
Every week, Katz's moves through 15,000 pounds of pastrami. That's roughly the weight of two adult elephants. Add to that 8,000 pounds of corned beef, 2,000 pounds of salami, and 4,000 hot dogs. These aren't theoretical figures dreamed up by a marketing department. This is what gets sliced, stacked between rye bread, and consumed by a never-ending stream of customers who line up at the counter stations, ticket in hand.
That ticket system deserves some explanation. When you walk through the door at Katz's, an attendant hands you a numbered slip of paper. As you move through the deli ordering from different stations—one for sandwiches, another for hot dogs, separate counters for bottled and fountain drinks—employees mark your ticket with a running total. Lose that ticket and you'll pay a fifty-dollar surcharge. The management claims the fee encourages people to retrace their steps and find the lost slip, preventing the obvious scam of swapping a large ticket for a smaller one on the way out. Whether it also discourages careless tourists is left unsaid.
Origins and Mythology
According to the deli's own telling, the story begins in 1888 when two brothers named Morris and Hyman Iceland opened a delicatessen on Ludlow Street. The Lower East Side was then becoming one of the most densely populated places on Earth, packed with Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe who had fled pogroms and poverty for the promises of America. These newcomers brought with them the culinary traditions of the old country: cured meats, pickled vegetables, rye bread, the communal rituals of eating.
But there's a historical wrinkle. Food writer Robert F. Moss, digging through Ellis Island records, found that Morris and Hyman Iceland didn't actually arrive in the United States until 1902. And the earliest reference to "Iceland Hyman delicatessen" that Moss could find dated to 1911. This doesn't necessarily mean the 1888 founding date is fiction—businesses change hands, records get lost, family mythologies calcify into accepted fact. What's certain is that by the time Willy Katz arrived in 1903 and bought in, the place was doing well enough to attract partners.
Willy brought his cousin Benny into the fold in 1910, and together they bought out the Iceland brothers entirely. The business became Katz's Delicatessen. A few years later, their landlord Harry Tarowsky invested and became a partner. The Katz and Tarowsky families would control the deli for the next seven decades.
A Building Moves Across the Street
In the 1930s, the city of New York decided to extend the subway system and run a new line beneath Houston Street. The construction required the deli to relocate. Instead of moving to a new neighborhood, the owners simply crossed to the other side of Houston Street, though they kept the entrance on Ludlow, maintaining continuity for regulars. The vacant lot on Houston became an outdoor storage area for barrels of meat and pickles—picture briny oak casks sitting in the Manhattan sun—until eventually, between 1946 and 1949, someone got around to building a proper storefront facade.
That facade, with its hand-painted signs and vintage neon, has become iconic. One of those signs bears the phrase "Katz's, that's all!" The story behind it is wonderfully accidental. When a signmaker asked Harry Tarowsky what the sign should say, Harry responded with those three words, meaning simply that he wanted the name and nothing more. The signmaker, taking the phrase literally, painted exactly what he'd heard. The misunderstanding became permanent.
Send a Salami to Your Boy in the Army
Of all the phrases associated with Katz's, none captures its history quite like this one.
During World War II, the sons of the owners—Lenny Katz and Izzy Tarowsky—both served in the armed forces. Izzy flew bombers in the South Pacific, one of the most dangerous jobs in the American military. Back home, the families developed a tradition of shipping food packages to their boys overseas. Izzy's mother Rose Tarowsky coined the rhyming slogan that would outlive her: "Send a Salami to Your Boy in the Army."
The phrase caught on beyond the deli. It appeared in the lyrics of a song in At War with the Army, a 1950 comedy starring Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis. The satirist Tom Lehrer referenced it in his darkly funny "So Long, Mom (A Song for World War III)": "Remember, Mommy, I'm off to get a Commie, so send me a salami, and try to smile somehow."
Katz's has kept the tradition alive. The deli offers special international shipping rates for American military addresses and has sent care packages to troops stationed in Afghanistan and Iraq. In an age when most commercial slogans feel focus-grouped into blandness, there's something stubbornly authentic about a catchphrase that originated with a worried mother.
The Neighborhood That Built the Deli
Understanding Katz's requires understanding the Lower East Side at the turn of the twentieth century. By some estimates, more than two million immigrants—mostly Jewish, mostly poor—crowded into this small patch of Manhattan. Tenement buildings rose five and six stories, with multiple families sharing apartments designed for one. Streets teemed with pushcart vendors, children playing stickball, workers heading to garment factories.
Public and private transportation barely existed for most residents. You walked. And because you walked, your world was small: a few blocks in any direction, the same faces at the same shops, the same synagogues and schools. This enforced proximity created intense community bonds. The deli became more than a place to eat; it was a gathering spot, a social hub, somewhere to catch up on gossip and argue politics.
Friday nights developed their own ritual. After the workweek ended and before the Sabbath began, neighborhood families would turn out for franks and beans at Katz's. This wasn't gourmet dining. It was cheap, filling, communal food eaten elbow-to-elbow with neighbors who spoke the same mix of Yiddish and English and understood, without explanation, why you might need to sit for a while with a cup of coffee and a plate of pickles.
The Yiddish Theater Connection
A few blocks north on Second Avenue, the Yiddish theater flourished. At its peak in the 1920s and 1930s, this stretch of Manhattan supported over a dozen Yiddish-language venues staging dramas, comedies, and musicals for audiences hungry for entertainment in their native tongue. The National Theater on Houston Street added another stage to the mix.
After performances, actors, singers, and comedians descended on Katz's. The deli became a kind of green room, a place where the performers could unwind, eat something substantial, and trade stories. Names that would later become famous in American entertainment—some crossing over into English-language radio, film, and television—got their start on those stages and refueled at those tables.
This connection between delis and show business wasn't unique to Katz's, but it helped establish a cultural association that persists today. Jewish comedy and Jewish food remain intertwined in the American imagination, and establishments like Katz's served as incubators for both.
Kosher-Style, Not Kosher
A point of clarification that matters to some diners: Katz's Delicatessen is not a kosher restaurant. It's kosher-style, which means it serves foods inspired by Jewish culinary traditions without adhering to the religious laws governing what counts as kosher.
The distinction is significant. A truly kosher establishment must follow strict rules about ingredient sourcing, preparation methods, and the separation of meat and dairy products. A rabbi or certifying agency supervises operations and provides official certification. Katz's has no such certification. The deli serves what it calls "culturally Jewish foods"—pastrami, corned beef, rye bread, pickles, matzo ball soup—without the religious compliance.
For observant Jews who keep kosher, this matters enormously. For the vast majority of Katz's customers, who come for the taste rather than the theology, it's a distinction without a difference. The pastrami doesn't know whether it's certified.
The Pastrami Itself
What makes a great pastrami sandwich? The process starts weeks before the meat reaches your plate.
Pastrami begins as beef navel, a cut from the belly of the cow that contains significant fat marbling. The meat is cured in a brine of salt, sugar, and spices—the exact recipe varies by producer and is typically guarded jealously. After curing for several days to several weeks (again, this varies), the meat is coated with a spice rub heavy on black pepper and coriander, then smoked slowly over wood. Finally, it's steamed until tender.
The result, when done well, combines multiple textures and flavors: the crusty, peppery exterior, the smoky depths beneath, the melting fat that lubricates every bite, the soft pink meat itself. Stack that between two slices of rye bread with a smear of mustard (never mayonnaise, according to deli purists), add a crunchy half-sour pickle on the side, and you have what devotees consider one of the great sandwiches in American cuisine.
Katz's serves its pastrami hand-cut—thick, irregular slices carved by a human being with a knife, not extruded from a machine. The countermen develop a following; regulars request their favorite slicer. Tips are expected and influential. A generous gratuity might earn you a few extra slices on top of an already enormous pile.
Changing Hands
The original family ownership lasted until 1988. As each generation aged, the baton passed: when Willy Katz died, his son Lenny took over. When Benny Katz and Harry Tarowsky both died in 1980, their heirs—Benny's son-in-law Artie Makstein and Harry's son Izzy—continued the partnership. But by the deli's centennial year, none of the remaining partners had children interested in carrying on the business.
They sold to Martin Dell, a veteran of the restaurant industry, along with his son Alan and his son-in-law Fred Austin. Alan brought professional culinary training and experience managing another neighborhood deli. His son Jake joined in 2009 and now oversees major operations, making him the fourth generation to run the place, even if the bloodline no longer traces back to the Katz or Tarowsky families.
Legal Troubles and Accessibility
In 2011, the United States government sued Katz's Delicatessen for violations of the Americans with Disabilities Act, the landmark 1990 law requiring public accommodations to be accessible to people with disabilities. The lawsuit arose after federal officials reviewed a Zagat guide listing New York's fifty most popular restaurants and began investigating whether those establishments complied with accessibility requirements. Katz's had ranked forty-second.
The Ludlow Street building, constructed in the early twentieth century and never designed with wheelchair users in mind, presented significant obstacles. The case dragged on for over a decade. Finally, in December 2024, Katz's reached a settlement with the government, agreeing to renovate the building to make it wheelchair-accessible. The specifics of what that renovation will entail, and how it will change the character of a space that has remained essentially unchanged for generations, remain to be seen.
Expansion and Experimentation
For most of its existence, Katz's operated from a single location. You went to the Lower East Side or you didn't have Katz's. In 2017, that changed with the opening of an auxiliary outpost in DeKalb Market Hall, a food court in the City Point development in Downtown Brooklyn. The same year, the deli launched mail-order sales, shipping vacuum-packed pastrami and other products across the country.
Purists might grumble, but the moves make commercial sense. The Lower East Side has gentrified dramatically since the days when immigrants crowded into tenements. The neighborhood now hosts boutiques, art galleries, and expensive apartments. Tourists increasingly outnumber locals in the lunch line. Expanding to Brooklyn and to online customers reduces dependence on a single aging building and a shifting neighborhood.
More unexpected was a 2021 partnership with Hendrick's Gin to create gin-inspired pickles. The deli's owner Jake Dell collaborated with Hendrick's master distiller Lesley Gracie to develop a brine incorporating juniper and cubeb berries—standard gin botanicals—along with coriander, an ingredient common to both the gin and Katz's traditional pickle recipe. Whether the resulting product qualifies as innovative or gimmicky depends on your tolerance for brand collaborations.
Hollywood's Favorite Deli
The When Harry Met Sally scene launched a tradition. Filmmakers looking for a recognizable, authentically New York location discovered that Katz's offered instant shorthand: old-school, unpretentious, visually distinctive, dense with character.
In Donnie Brasco, the 1997 crime drama starring Johnny Depp as an undercover FBI agent infiltrating the mob, Depp's character meets a federal contact at the deli. The setting makes sense—in a neighborhood once run by organized crime, a neutral public space with constant foot traffic offers relative safety for a clandestine conversation.
The 2007 Beatles-inspired musical Across the Universe includes a scene at Katz's where a character learns he's been drafted to fight in Vietnam. The deli represents the homefront, the ordinary life that the draft will soon disrupt.
We Own the Night, another 2007 film, features Joaquin Phoenix, Mark Wahlberg, and Eva Mendes in scenes at the deli. The French comedy Nous York brought actors there in 2012. The indie drama Sidewalks of New York has characters wolfing down pastrami sandwiches. Even the claymation film Mary and Max used Katz's in the background of bus stop scenes.
Television has come calling too. The Jim Gaffigan Show made the deli a regular hangout for its star. Law and Order filmed outside. The prank show Impractical Jokers staged bits inside. The Travel Channel's Man v. Food and the spinoff Adam Richman's Best Sandwich in America both featured the sandwiches. When you need visual shorthand for "authentic New York," Katz's delivers.
The 2025 Super Bowl Ad
In February 2025, during Super Bowl LIX, the circle closed. Meg Ryan and Billy Crystal returned to Katz's for a Hellmann's mayonnaise commercial that parodied their famous scene from thirty-six years earlier. Crystal's line acknowledged the absurdity: "I can't believe they let us back in here!"
The ad updated the original's famous closing moment by having Sydney Sweeney deliver the "I'll have what she's having" line to a waitress. Whether this commercial constitutes a touching reunion, shameless nostalgia mining, or brilliant brand integration probably depends on your age and your feelings about mayonnaise on pastrami. (Traditional deli culture frowns on mayo; mustard is canonical.)
What Survives
Katz's Delicatessen occupies an unusual position in contemporary New York. It is simultaneously a functioning restaurant, a historical artifact, a tourist attraction, and a film set. The authenticity that made it famous has become a brand to be licensed and leveraged. The neighborhood that created it has transformed beyond recognition.
And yet the pastrami remains exceptional. The countermen still hand-cut the meat. The ticket system still confuses first-timers. The neon signs still glow. The pickles still crunch.
There's something stubborn about the place, a refusal to modernize in ways that would sacrifice the essential experience. You still stand at the counter and point at what you want. You still carry your own tray to a table. You still leave through the turnstile, surrendering your ticket to a cashier who tallies the damage.
Whether this constitutes genuine preservation or calculated performance is perhaps the wrong question. What matters is that the sandwich in your hands—overstuffed, glistening, peppery, smoky—is the same sandwich that fed garment workers in 1910, that soldiers dreamed about in 1944, that Meg Ryan pretended to enjoy in 1989. The ingredients haven't changed. The method hasn't changed. The crowds keep coming.
Some things don't need to be improved. They just need to continue.
``` The essay transforms the encyclopedic Wikipedia content into an engaging narrative optimized for text-to-speech reading, opening with the famous "When Harry Met Sally" hook and weaving together the deli's history, cultural significance, and culinary traditions into a cohesive story.