Queso y Crudo, Pres. José Evaristo Uriburu 1087, Recoleta. I walk past this place all the time, being just five blocks from home on the same street. I finally popped in one day and decided to go for their pastron y pickles sandwich. It is, as you can see, the lunchmeat variety of pastrami, and the pickles, unfortunately, were sweet bread & butter style pickles, which don’t go at all with pastrami. Given that the only mustard they had available was a sweet honey mustard, I opted out, and added some good spicy mustard at home. The bread was a sort of mushy whole wheat sandwich loaf. All in all, it just didn’t work. It wasn’t inedible, but it wasn’t anything I’d get again.
El Paso Sandwich Co., Primera Junta 1094, San Isidro. This one’s a trek for those of us in the city. It’s a two bus jaunt that takes about an hour and a quarter from here in Recoleta. On the other hand, you get dropped off only a block from the restaurant, in a small plaza featuring a former lighthouse, surrounded by casual food stands. Oh, and the lighthouse is now an ice cream shop – kinda cool. This place has been getting lots of play for its sandwiches, and while pastrami wasn’t our reason for coming here, we ordered up a Reuben, along with a Cuban and a Pepperoni. Each comes on a different kind of bread, and each has its charms. The pastrami here was flavorful, smoky and well spiced. Reasonably juicy, though far too lean – they’ve trimmed every bit of fat off of it that they can.
As to being a Reuben – it ought to be corned beef, not pastrami, and classically it’s topped with sauerkraut, russian dressing, and swiss cheese, on griddled rye bread. This had a sort of chucrut, the local version of sauerkraut, just not very sour, more like vaguely pickled cabbage, pickles, which shouldn’t be there at all, and thousand island dressing instead of russian (the former is sweeter, with chopped pickles in it, the latter is spicier, with horseradish and hot paprika), the cheese was not swiss, and it was served on what amounts to “texas toast” instead of rye. It was still tasty, but only a vaguely distant homage to a Reuben. The Cuban, by the way, was excellent, and pretty dead on, other than they didn’t press and grill it. The Pepperoni was just weird, and we ended up picking the pieces of pepperoni and cheese out of the sandwich and leaving the rest. If I remember right the sandwiches all ran just shy of 300 pesos.
Chancho Chico, José A. Cabrera 6085, Palermo. Takes the honors in my life for being the only pork pastrami I’ve ever had. Obviously going against the meat grain for a classic Jewish sandwich, but, I don’t keep kosher anyway, so…. It’s different. Obviously. The texture and the flavor is quite different from a traditional pastrami. I don’t know what they’ve spiced it with, but it doesn’t come across as the traditional blend of brown sugar, mustard seed, coriander seed, smoked paprika, garlic, cloves, salt and pepper. It’s well smoked, which is really nice, since so much of the pastrami here isn’t. I’d happily eat the pastrami itself again, anytime. On the other hand, the sandwich didn’t really stand-up. The bun was too small and kind of mushy, it fell apart rapidly, the sweet bread and butter pickles are just the wrong kind of pickle to pair with it. And no condiments on it. Good, but not wow – though that relates to the sandwich, not the pastrami, which I’d happily pick up some (this place is a pork-only butcher shop, that makes sandwich and has about eight seats at countertops to eat them at) to go and make my own with decent bread and accompaniments. I think it was 260 pesos.
Rotisería Olam, Junín 384, Congreso. Considered by many to be “the” classic Jewish deli and sandwich shop in the center of town, I’m not sure why I’ve never popped in here before. I’ve certainly walked past it many a time. Who knows? They tout themselves as the kings of the pastrami world here – “el rey de pastrom caliente”. My initial reaction when looking at the sandwich which arrived, was… “that’s huge”. The pletzlach it’s serve on has to be a solid 16-18 cm across – 6-7″! And it’s packed with thin sliced pastrami. At first it looked like the pressed lunchmeat style, but I think that was only because it’s sliced so thin. It’s actually pretty damned good, and retains a reasonable amount of fat. It’s not heavily spiced nor smoked, but there’s enough of that there to taste. The pickles are good dill pickles. Once again, as at so many places, no condiments. This is a “to go” only place (they do have two barstools stuck in a corner against the wall where I suppose you could sit and eat), so I brought it home and slathered it with some spicy mustard and was very happy. Best in town? No. But, again, pretty damned good. 180 pesos. A bargain.
There was an article in one of the local papers not that long ago, on three places where you could get pastrami… with a twist. One of them was La Crespo, which they touted as the best “New York style” pastrami sandwich – I’d agree. Another was a fast food joint that serves up pastrami that they lightly char in pan and then top with caramelized onions, pickles, cheddar cheese, fried sweet potatoes, and spicy tomato sauce – that doesn’t even sound appealing. The third, Pastrón Don Elias, Warnes 573, Villa Crespo, is a deli where they don’t make sandwiches, they just sell their pastrami by the 200gm weight (no sense of why they won’t break it into 100gm portions, but it’s 200gms or multiples), and they sell it either sliced or in block. Now, the article mentioned that their preferred way is to sell it in block, along with a recipe that involves simmering the block of pastrami for three hours in Coca Cola and brown sugar – because coke isn’t sweet enough? Apparently, having bought it in slices, and it turning out to be a dense, chewy, vaguely smoked lunchmeat with some paprika on the edge, that is really the only way to go about it, because on its own, it’s not tender, and probably needs that slow cooking. It’s also not very flavorful. Hey, if I have to end up cooking the pastrami myself, I’ll just start with fresh meat and do it right. I had some pickles, spicy mustard, and those little canape sized rye breads and made myself some mini-sandwiches. Meh. I think it was 190 pesos for 200 grams.
I almost didn’t go to this one – it, and the above, were what I decided to pick up for lunch on the 24th, a holiday for many. I’d called Don Elias and they’d told me they were open until 1pm. I called Rut’s Catering, Loyola 211, Villa Crespo, just a few blocks away. The phone rang and rang, and then was answered by a guy who when I said I was calling to confirm they were open, and until when, responded with, “I wouldn’t be answering the phone if we weren’t open asshole”, and then hung up. In Spanish of course. But, I was out there anyway, and wanted to try their pastrami, so, headed there. Let’s make it worse, I was standing in line behind two customers, and one of the two counter guys was regaling them with the tale of “some asshole who called up to see if we were open, obviously we were or I wouldn’t have answered the phone”. I waited, got my pastrami sandwich, and then said, “Oh, by the way, I’m the asshole who called. I had no way of knowing until you answered the phone if you were open, and plus I wanted to know until when, which you didn’t tell me. What did you want me to do, hang up as soon as you answered?” Then walked away, didn’t wait for an answer.
The pastrami itself is pretty damned good – you can see it’s thick cut, and it’s got some spice and some smoke, and though they’ve trimmed off most of the fat, there’s at least some. Weird little cornichon style pickles sliced into near paper thin rounds, over a layer of what at first I thought was butter, but turned out to be mayo. Good pletzlach. 200 pesos. But wouldn’t go back.
Winner of this round, hands-down, Rotiseria Olam.
