Tuesday, January 18, 2005.
Pastrami And Corned Beef, All Too Thick.
Back to school, back to work. But Mary Ann called early to see if I could join her for lunch. The extent of my pile necessitated a late lunch, which knocked out a bunch of our original choices. We wound up at the new Big Apple Deli, whose motto on its menu is "Fuhgeddaboutit!" It's in the cottage on Maple Street that once housed Nautical and then (briefly) Piatti. The people there are enthusiastic and eager to please, even bringing free samples of their Reuben knishes to everybody in the room. (Not bad, that.)
However, they fell hard on some critical matters. Mary Ann and I had, respectively, corned beef and pastrami sandwiches. In both cases, the meat was cut almost an eighth of an inch thick, and along the grain. Totally wrong. Each of these slices should have been three or four very thin slices. There is no doubt that this gives far better flavor release, because there's more surface area in contact with your taste and smell apparatus. And meats as potentially tough as pastrami must be cut across the grain. Otherwise, you'd be chewing all day. I'd say they could do a better job on fat removal, too. On the plus side, they say they get their meats from the Carnegie Deli.
For the moment, though, I'd say their motto is right on. We left most of the sandwiches there, and walked across the street to the Maple Street Cafe for some lentil soup.
I really should have gone to dinner after the show, but a combination of excitement over my weight loss (down another pound, officially, to 232, from 240 in November) and a lack of powerful appetite moved me to head home.
