DISH : Pastramic Perfection

The best pizza in America may be in New Haven, the best hot dogs in Chicago, the best espresso off Pioneer Square in Seattle. But the best--the only--real pastrami sandwich is right here in Los Angeles, slapped together by the truckload at Langer’s Delicatessen just east of downtown. No Manhattan deli comes close.

Find a noontime seat at Langer’s counter and you’ll see the sandwiches, made to order, yet lining the pickup area as if it were illegal to order anything else from the zillion-item menu, little soldiers of cholesterol, flanked by pickles and ready to roll.

Where most deli pastrami sandwiches attempt to distinguish themselves with showy thickness, doses of black pepper or almost punitive lashings of nutmeg, Langer’s is the classic sandwich.

The rye bread, double-baked, has a hard, crunchy crust that gives way to a steamy soft interior sharply scented with caraway and smeared with pungent deli mustard. The meat, hand-sliced, flabby, not lean, precisely--though most of the invisible fat has been steamed out, no good pastrami could be said to be lean--has the firm, chewy consistency of Parma prosciutto, a gentle flavor of garlic and a clean edge of smokiness that can remind you of the kinship between great pastrami and first-rate Texas barbecue.

If we were on the Cultural Affairs Commission, we’d erect a gargantuan bronze statue of Langer’s pastrami sandwich kitty-corner from the restaurant at the hub of Westlake Park.