This past August, I made a pilgrimage to Katz's Delicatessen on New York City's legendary Lower East Side, where I had my faith restored in the pastrami sandwich.
At this venerable institution, where you line up to order from a wily counterman, great hunks of meat are sliced, by hand, off enormous smoked briskets, and piled onto slices of steaming rye bread. If you are serious about meat, it doesn't hurt if you slip the guy an extra buck or two. Lately, I've noticed a kind word in Spanish gets you thicker slices, too.
What makes a Katz's pastrami sandwich great is more than the quality of the meat, which is perfectly infused with smoke, crusted on the outside with ebony colored spices, and as red as a baby's cheek in a windstorm. It is also the fact that the counterman slices it according to your specifications, giving you a small sample before completing the task.
In moral terms, a Katz pastrami sandwich is—in comparison with the machine-sliced, commercial brand of pastrami that passes for the real thing in 99 percent of delis west of the Hudson River, Mount Olympus to Pennsylvania Avenue—a colorful original to a pallid Xerox copy.
Know that going in and you should find something to like about Milly's, a cheerful, suburban-style deli hard by the Regal Multiplex at Village Square in the Lakes, because sandwiches are not their strong suit. At first, a friend and I had a hard time finding the sign and so drove around the complex a few times before spotting it. (It's just a few pads directly to the east of the theaters, if that helps.)
Milly's bills itself as a New York- style delicatessen, and the menu is quick to inform that it is not glatt kosher, which means it serves some items that aren't kosher at all. The menu also tells us that Grandma Milly worked in one of LA's finest delicatessens for more than 40 years (without mentioning any names) and that the restaurant was created to honor her amazing spirit. How nice.
This is a big, bright space with lots of atmospheric pictures on the walls and a big deli case next to the front door, over which a Boar's Head sign is emblazoned. For a deli freak such as myself, this is never good news unless I'm ordering a roast beef sandwich or something similarly neutral in ethnic terms.
So when I tried my first sandwich here, I thought to cheat the fates by ordering the brisket instead of the corned beef or pastrami, but then came a bland, pre-cooked pile of uniformly sliced meat, probably, though I cannot be sure, from our pals at Boar's Head.
That's the bad news. The good is the many other things offered here because when the kitchen is cooking with gas, and that's often, the majority of them don't disappoint.
Take the perfectly cooked matzo brie the deli serves for breakfast, unleavened flatbread scrambled with eggs, good with the house strawberry preserves but better with maple syrup. Or how about Milly's matzo ball soup, homemade soup stocked with vegetables, chopped chicken and a huge, fluffy matzo ball, a delicious way to soak up the good broth.
I do not know the provenance of the deli's smoked fish but the three I tasted—a smooth-as-silk sable, a buttery, hand-sliced Nova and a good, smoked whitefish—were impeccable. The two-fish platter gets you two bagels, red onion, tomato, a choice of cream cheese (we had chive), pickles and a choice of the good deli salads, the best being a creamy potato salad. And it's perfect for sharing.
Milly's entrées come with all of the trimmings. Two worth a shout are the meaty, stuffed cabbage rolls and a dense, homemade meat loaf, but there are also grilled liver and onions, chicken in a pot and a half-roasted chicken, among many others. Rather than a sandwich, I prefer something like the grilled kosher knockwurst with sauerkraut, which can be smeared with any one of a number of good, available mustards.
As to the side dishes, the potato latke grew on me as I ate it. At first, I thought I was eating nothing more than a mashed potato pancake but its deftly grilled surface and sweet, comforting flavors gradually won me over. I wish I could say the same for kishka—a.k.a. floury, vegetarian stuffed sausage—but the house brown gravy lacked oomph.
You'll want to go back to the pastry case by the front door for a second look as there are many appealing options in it. The individually wrapped marble pound cake is terrific, dense and eggy, as is the house cheesecake, a real New York-style cheesecake with a small bottom crust.
There are usually rugulah, small, cream-cheese pastries laden with raspberries or chocolate chips, and if you are lucky, there will be hmantashen, triangular pastries traditionally eaten at Purim, with fillings such as poppy seeds, prune and apricot.
But if your heart is set on pastrami, try Carnegie Deli at TI.