1997 LA Times Story: Heart in the Rye Place

Thanks to Google Alerts, we re-discovered this gem of a story on Langer’s written back in 1997 by Denise Hamilton for the Los Angeles Times. Here’s a sample:

LOS ANGELES — Al Langer, whose pungent pastrami on chewy rye is widely considered the best in Los Angeles, knows it takes more than a tasty sandwich to keep a delicatessen afloat for half a century.

In part, it’s a crapshoot, admits the 84-year-old patriarch of Langer’s Deli, which has seen good times and bad in the MacArthur Park neighborhood where he opened shop 50 years ago this month with $500 in his pocket.

But the scrappy New Jerseyite says it’s also a matter of knowing when to hold, what to fold and how to change with the times.

Take the deli’s location. As the once-prosperous commercial and residential Jewish neighborhood became filled with struggling Central American refugees, Langer held on, convinced that there would always be customers for his matzo brei, kippers and those fat, famous sandwiches.

Maybe so, but not at night or on Sundays anymore.

Click here to read the entire article – it’s worth it.

LA Weekly’s Jonathan Gold: Langer’s one of 99 Essential LA Restaurants

The LA Weekly’s famed food critic Jonathan Gold has named Langer’s Delicatessen-Restaurant one of LA’s 99 Essential Restaurants:

…bite into a Langer’s pastrami sandwich: thick slices of hand-sliced meat, glistening with peppery fat, as dense and as smoky as Texas barbecue; thick-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. The fact is inescapable: Langer’s serves the best pastrami sandwich in America…

Click here to read the entire article.

Thank you, LA Weekly and thank you, Jonathan!

Norm Langer Receives Top Hot Tamale of LA Award

Langer’s Delicatessen-Restaurant’s is pleased to announce Norm Langer has been named one of 10 recipients of the first annual Top Hot Tamales of Los Angeles Awards! The award “honors 10 community builders who have helped begin to change the MacArthur Park neighborhood from a ‘crime-filled point of destination’ into a ‘growing art, business, cultural, educational, recreational, residential, service, and social point of destination.'”

The 10 recipients are:

  • LA Councilmember Ed P. Reyes – First District;
  • LA Police Chief William J. Bratton, Los Angeles Police Department;
  • Bishop J. Jon Bruno, Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles;
  • Arturo Martinez, Deputy City Attorney, Los Angeles City Attorney’s Office;
  • Albert Torres, Interim Chief Park Ranger/ Department of Recreation and Parks;
  • Barbosa Polverini, Board Member, Levitt Pavilion at MacArthur Park;
  • Karen Mack, Executive Director, LA Commons;
  • Jackie Jones, Pacific Asian Consortium in Employment Business Development Center;
  • Norm Langer, Langer’s Delicatessen and Restaurant;
  • Joe Colletti, PhD, Episcopal Housing Alliance and Economic Development.

Norm is thrilled and honored to receive this award with such an auspicious grouping of individuals who make a difference here in Los Angeles. Thank you!

One happy customer

Why not you? Langer’s has the honor of serving everyone: all ages, lifestyles, cultures and backgrounds. Visit us soon – we look forward to serving you.

Jaunted.com recommends Langer’s

Our thanks to Jaunted.com (“The Pop Culture Travel Guide”) for their review of Langer’s and in particular, our #19 sandwich:

You’ll realize this is a special place once you set eyes on their signature item: the legendary hot pastrami sandwich, piled high on rye bread, topped with swiss cheese and coleslaw; kosher dills on the side.

In the eyes of many eaters, it’s this smoky, spicy sandwich that makes Langer’s stand above its many LA competitors.

Click here to read the entire review and visit their site. Thank you, friends at Jaunted! We appreciate your words of support.

KTLA 5’s Sam Rubin at Langer’s

KTLA 5’s Sam Rubin had $100 to spend as part of the station’s Steals & Deals in Downtown LA – so he chose Langer’s and fed EIGHT PEOPLE plus takeout for just over $100!

Thanks to Sam and Channel 5 KTLA for thinking of us – we had a great time and hope you come back soon!

Jonathan Gold: “Langer’s, the Lourdes of Jewish deli meats”

Our favorite restaurant critic (and everyone else’s, for that matter), Jonathan Gold of the LA Weekly, recently answered reader mail with a wonderful metaphor for Langer’s:

My instinct, of course, is to point you toward Langer’s, which is the Lourdes of Jewish deli meats. Langer’s corned beef is steamed to exquisite tenderness, and the crunchy-edged seeded rye bread is superb. Langer’s knows from Russian dressing and is if anything rather overgenerous with the sauerkraut. I have long sworn fealty to what I have come to know as Old Number 44, although to tell the truth, I prefer the nippy cheese to the traditional slice of Swiss. (A Reuben is decidedly not kosher.)

You can read the entire post here at the LAWeekly.com site.

Thank you, as always, Jonathan, for your support – from the Langer’s family.