One of the world’s great joys is a great deli. If I lived in America, I would eat in delis frequently (in fact, despite what I do every day in Tokyo, I still maintain that my basic preference is for a nice sandwich at lunch time). When you see the pictures here, you’ll probably agree that it’s a good thing for my health that I live in Tokyo.
I was in the upper parts of Midtown for lunch – just south of the park. A few blocks random walk put me right in front of Carnegie Deli, which had a big ol’ line of tourists out the door, so I went across the street to Benash Deli. The sign outside promises that their sandwiches hold one pound of meat (if such a thing could ever be held by a mere sandwich), and I didn’t have that much time to walk around, so… The atmosphere is OK, but the (Russian?) waiter was fairly grumpy, or just sorta depressed. The prices are violent, as in $15+ depending on which sandwich you want, but that’s the same as Carnegie and I figured it was just a Midtown deli gouge phenomenon. Right first time!
I think everything comes with these pickles and coleslaw. The slaw was OK in an “I haven’t been in America for 5 months so I don’t mind that this is watery and boring” sort of way. The pickles were travestational. It’s not often that I say something tastes terrible, and I won’t go so far as to exaggerate and say they were ‘inedible’. But I cut a small piece out of one of them, tried it, and immediately called it a day. It didn’t taste at all like a pickle to me, and there was a strong chemical taste (where said chemical was not ‘vinegar’).
So I ordered corned beef on rye, which was indeed so big that it was already intruding into the above photo. This is one of my three favorite deli things – the other two being whitefish salad or lox on a bagel. With sandwiches not being available on bagels, and the server seeming to think that perhaps I could order a bagel separately and build it myself, but not being quite sure or very excited about it, I just gave up and got corned beef. Oddly, I had this problem a few years ago at another place in the neighborhood, maybe Carnegie. Are my expectations out of line? I think not.
This half of the sandwich sure looks like half a pound. It’s comical that they call this a sandwich; not only is the filling overdone, but the bread is too soft for anything substantial. I think that comedy is part of the point. Still, when eaten in stages (take out some beef, eat with coleslaw; top remaining beef with coleslaw and eat as sandwich) it wasn’t bad at all. The beef was decent – pretty well-pickled, a little warm, soft, fatty.