A Good Time to Deli Dally

In the early ‘90s, I worked for a magazine whose downtown offices were located in the mid-Wilshire district, not far from MacArthur Park.

This had once been a lovely old neighborhood full of great buildings like the Art Deco-flavored Bullock’s-Wilshire department store, built in 1929, and the stately Ambassador Hotel, where Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated.

After World War II, the Westlake neighborhood just east of here developed into a mostly Jewish residential area that fanned out around MacArthur Park. It was in 1947 that Al Langer, who’d come to Los Angeles from New Jersey, opened a neighborhood deli similar to the ones he’d worked in as a kid.

I used to have lunch at Langer’s Deli almost every Friday, though even then the neighborhood was much different from what it had once been. The Ambassador was boarded up, Bullock’s had been sold and stripped of many of its Art Deco accouterments, and the lake at MacArthur Park had been drained while the city constructed a subway. It was only 10 blocks from my office to Langer’s, but we seldom walked. The jaunt wasn’t particularly strenuous; just depressing.

But once inside Langer’s, it was as if time had stood still. The place was always packed, often with elderly businessmen who didn’t even bother with the menu since they’d been ordering the same thing for decades. We’d wait 10 or 15 minutes for a booth in the back and take our time looking over the menu, while the crotchety, gravel-voiced waitresses who always called us “Hon,” waited impatiently for our order.

Some of the older waitresses would get mad if you ordered the wrong thing, like corned beef layered with chopped liver.

“No, Hon,” they’d say. “You don’t want that.” What we wanted, they’d tell us, was the hot pastrami with Swiss cheese and Russian-style dressing. Or maybe the hot pastrami and sauerkraut. “Go with the pastrami, Hon,” they’d say. And we would.

There are very few things I miss about working in downtown L.A., but a Langer’s pastrami sandwich is one of them. It used to be that Matt, who also worked at the magazine, and I would meet a couple of times a year at Langer’s before going to a Dodger game.

I’d order the No. 44, hot pastrami with nippy cheese, and wolf it down before heading for Chavez Ravine. But then the neighborhood got so bad that Langer’s stopped serving dinner altogether, and I haven’t been there for a few years.

There are several good delis in Orange County. The most authentic is probably the Katella Deli in Los Alamitos. They do a nice pastrami on rye with coleslaw and Russian dressing. They also make a gigantic vegetarian sandwich full of alfalfa sprouts, cucumbers and avocado on whole-wheat bread.

I’ve got a feeling Al Langer would only shake his head in disgust at such a sandwich. You could get just about anything you wanted on a sandwich at Langer’s Deli--except sprouts. Al didn’t believe in sprouts.

Jerry’s Famous Deli, with multiple locations, including one in Costa Mesa, is also very good, although sometimes it seems a little slick to me. Sort of a Disneyfied deli, a place where businessmen in expensive suits go and pretend they are at a cleaner, less gritty version of Katz’s Deli in New York City (best known for the famous Meg Ryan scene in “When Harry Met Sally”).

But usually when I’m missing a Langer’s pastrami, I go to Kaplan’s Deli in Costa Mesa. I get the No. 37--New York black, seasoned pastrami with Swiss cheese on rye.

They don’t serve it with a Russian dressing, which is too bad, and the wait staff isn’t nearly surely enough, if you ask me (Why is it so difficult to get really rude, impatient servers these days?), but the pastrami is lean and flavorful and the Jewish rye has the perfect blend of a crisp crust and soft center.

My daughter, Paige, is a big fan of delis. During a recent visit to New York, she made a point of dining at Katz’s and the Carnegie Deli. She found the obnoxious waiters to be very amusing and declared Carnegie’s cheesecake the best she’d ever had. But I wouldn’t really say she’s a deli aficionado. For one thing, she doesn’t like pastrami. Or corned beef. Instead, she always goes for the roast turkey sandwiches. Still, I thought it would be fun to have lunch with her at Kaplan’s and see what she thought.

The first thing that annoyed her at Kaplan’s was how prompt everything was. We’d hardly had a chance to look over the menu before some cheerful kid came over wanting to know if we would like something to drink. And every time our iced teas got even a teensy-weensy bit below the rim, he’d refill them.

“That’s not the way they do it in a real deli,” Paige said. “In a real deli, you’re lucky to get your iced tea before the bill.”

And then there was the matter of substitutions. No matter what we asked for, our waiter cheerfully said, “No problemo.” Even when Paige asked him to trim the crust off her rye bread.

I don’t know what they’d do at Katz’s if you asked them to trim the crust off the rye bread, but I’m pretty sure Al Langer would refuse to serve you.

Despite our disappointment over the cheerfulness and efficiency of Kaplan’s, the food was good. Two older gentlemen sitting at a table near us ordered the chicken-noodle soup with matzo balls, followed by hot corned-beef sandwiches. They quickly finished their lunches but seemed unimpressed.

“It’s not like New York,” one of them complained.

“You’re right,” said the other, wrapping up half of his sandwich in a paper napkin and putting it in his coat pocket. “Everyone in this place is smiling.”

He seemed disgusted by the notion. And I knew exactly what he meant.

Sunday-Thursday, 6 a.m. to 10 p.m.; Friday and Saturday, 6 a.m. to midnight.

David Lansing’s column is published on Fridays in Orange County Calendar. His e-mail address is occalendar@latimes.com.