Great Pastrami Taste-Off Matches Sandwiches From L.A.’S Top Delis : Good Pastrami Doesn’t Grow on Trees

Bob Trager’s voice is hoarse. “I’ve been yelling for four days straight,” he says. The din of L.A.’s newest deli crackles in the background, and every other sentence or so his conversation is interrupted--only Trager’s barked wisdom can solve some problems.

Not quite two weeks in business, the Beverly Hills branch of the Carnegie Deli is having no trouble finding customers--the moneymen are ecstatic. But Trager, who left his position as general manager of the New York operation to open the deli out here, still has worries. The pastrami, for example.

The pickling room and in-house smoker, which will make the Beverly Hills shop the only L.A. deli to cure its own pastrami and corned beef, sit unused. For the moment, most of the meats are shipped from New York. “We’re still experimenting to see how the California water works with our pickling formulas,” Trager says. “Water is very important, the biggest ingredient. The pickling, the smoking, the steaming--everything is water.”

Trager goes on to tout the quality of New York water, though one of the battles of the Carnegie’s recent Deli War with the Stage involved accusations that Carnegie used water from Secaucus, N. J. (“New Jersey’s got great water,” responded Carnegie commander-in-chief Milton Parker to the New York Times last year.)

So far, Trager doesn’t like L.A. water much. “All the water we’re using is softened and then goes through charcoal filters and it still doesn’t taste right,” he says. “I don’t know what the answer is yet, but we’re working on it.”

Over at one of L.A.’s oldest delis--Langer’s, in business since 1947--Al Langer has pastrami woes of his own. “I’m worried about the future,” he says, “yes, I am.” The problem is the shortage of good, young countermen and women, who are the crucial final ingredient of a great pastrami on rye. “The skill of a counterman is a dying art,” Langer says, “and the younger generation just isn’t interested.”

On the phone with a curious pastrami eater, he easily talks for 20 minutes on his favorite subject. “Do you know the difference between pastrami and corned beef?” he asks. “I mean besides the fact that pastrami’s smoked and corned beef gets boiled?” (Both are cured in similar spices and preservatives--often garlic, black pepper, cayenne pepper and paprika.)

He doesn’t wait for an answer. “OK. Put your hand in the middle of your chest and you’ll feel your breastbone. Underneath, where the breastbone starts to curve toward your side, that’s called the plate, if you’re a cow. And off each of the two plates you get one corned beef or brisket. But the pastrami comes from the belly button. That means you get two corned beefs off a steer but only one pastrami.”

(The lean shoulder cut known as deckle is also used for pastrami, but Langer only likes the smaller, fattier navel--”Lean pastrami is dry,” he says.)

Unlike the Carnegie, Langer has never bothered to cure or smoke his own pastrami. “It’s all basically the same,” he says. “What matters is what I do with it. Where the average deli will buy pastrami and throw it in the steamer for 30 minutes, we steam it anywhere from 2 1/2 to 3 hours--until it’s tender. That way, you’re not eating a racquetball. The problem is I lose 25% to 28% more than the other guy because the more you steam it, the more pastrami shrinks.”

That’s why when you order a Langer’s hot pastrami on rye you don’t get the 6-inch-high stack of meat you find at certain other delis. “If you can’t chew on it, what good is quantity?” Langer asks. “Would you rather have a half a pound of rubber or a quarter pound of soft and tender pastrami?”

You do get a sandwich in which the meat has been hand-cut to order (the Carnegie and other L.A. delis will only hand-cut the meat if you remember to ask). “I can’t machine-cut it,” Langer says. “I steam it so tender it’d fall apart. This way, you get pastrami that’s thicker and juicier--something edible. You know, good pastrami requires effort,” Langer says.

“Thank God we go through so much meat that it’s almost impossible to hand-slice,” Carnegie’s Trager says. “It’s a compromise on one level--you might lose some of the pickling on the outside--but if the meat’s steamed properly, it doesn’t make that much of a difference.”

Langer does concede that his pastrami is not nearly as peppery as New York pastrami, which is darker and typically dipped in a molasses-type base. “I find that the general public on the West Coast feels that New York products are too spicy. You also deal with people who want only lean pastrami. For some reason, be it medical or their own psychology, they can’t handle it.”

Trager, however, is confident Los Angeles will come around to Carnegie’s spicier pastrami.

“To me,” Trager says, “most pastrami in Los Angeles is nondescript--it tastes like salami.”