LA Weekly: Langer’s Makes Gold’s 99 Essential LA Restaurants List
Langer’s is proud to announce our inclusion in Jonathan Gold’s “99 Essential LA Restaurants” list for 2009, now appearing here in the current issue of the LA Weekly (pick it up!). Here’s a sampling of Jonathan’s very kind words for our pastrami:
The late Al Langer was among the last of the great deli men, a guy who could talk to you about sandwiches until your ears fell off but more importantly, knew the contours of a pastrami the way a great sushi chef does a side of tuna. In the course of the half-block walk from the Alvarado Blue Line station to his delicatessen, you smell the food from a half-dozen Central American countries, pass within sight of Mexican street murals, and are offered the opportunity to buy a counterfeit green card. Within the deli itself, run by his son Norm, you may wait for a table with customers speaking every language but Yiddish.
Bite into a Langer’s pastrami sandwich: thick slices of hand-sliced beef, glistening with peppery fat, as dense and as smoky as Texas barbecue; thickly cut seeded corn rye, hot, crisp-crusted and soft inside, with a slightly sour tang that helps tame the richness of the meat; a dab of yellow mustard, as important to the whole as a sushi master’s wasabi, and you’ll know the inescapable fact: Langer’s serves the best pastrami sandwich in America.
