The Purchasing Power of Pastrami
Take a bite out of what makes Katz’s bestselling sandwich the only changing aspect of the delicatessen.
By Molly Mintz
As early as eight, pastrami grease decadently glistens on morning diners’ lips.
It is never too early for pastrami from Katz’s Delicatessen. Whether it is oozing with yellow mustard between two slices of crisp rye bread or blanketed between the pillowy folds of a gooey golden omelet, even the quickest quick glimpse of the blushing, gleaming meat is enough to send one’s tastebuds into stimulation overload. A century before Billy Crystal’s Harry met Meg Ryan’s Sally, this kosher-style restaurant opened its doors on the southeast corner of Ludlow and East Houston, and has since solidified itself as one of the world’s finest pastrami purveyors.
For Shelly Raskin, a devoted regular who has been scarfing down the deli’s sandwiches for the past sixty years, Katz’s pastrami fame is nonnegotiable. “They have the best pastrami in the world,” he gushed, licking his lips to save miniscule pieces of smoked meat from lodging into his white goatee. “There’s just nothing to replace this. Once you’ve eaten here, you’re spoiled forever.”
Comparing Katz’s pastrami to other restaurants is futile, especially since the meat itself embodies the same nostalgia encapsulated by the entire deli. Its presence is impossible to ignore; the pastrami alone comprises a sumptuous fifty to eighty-three percent of the thirty thousand pounds of meat handled at Katz’s during an average week. From the curing to the spice rubbing to the smoking to the boiling to the steaming to the slicing to that invigorating first bite, not one step of the time-consuming preparation process lacks Katz’s old-fashioned touch. Every detail has been carefully mastered through years of dutiful practice and patience.
“When you smoke the pastrami, it’s about the type of wood chips you use. It’s about the length of smoking. It’s about how you stack the meat in the smoker,” twenty-eight-year-old Jake Dell impassioned. As the third-generation owner of Katz’s Delicatessen, he is just as ferociously invested in the meat as its loyal constituents and handlers. Katz’s employees always cut their meat by hand, treating the last steps of sandwich-making like artists painting their final brushstrokes. Throughout its history, the pastrami recipe has remained unchanged — just like Katz’s entire identity. Why burden the nostalgic purity with unnecessary additions or alterations?
By lunchtime a long and winding line forms outside the restaurant. Shelly knows the anticipation all too well. “I get a tremendous amount of anxiety when the line’s out the door. Where’s my sandwich? I can’t believe I’m waiting an hour and a half for a pastrami sandwich!” he exclaimed, saturated with emotion. Customers hailing from nearby places like the Upper East Side, Palm Beach, and Michigan to far away countries like Greece and Spain await their own taste of beefy nirvana. Newcomers are not necessarily stifled by the sandwich’s twenty dollar price tag; longtime clients like Shelly, nonetheless, are nostalgic for the eras in which their massive meal cost less than a dollar.
Few of Katz’s characterstics have been altered since 1888, other than the dollar amount scrawled on the back of the deli’s signature tickets after ordering sandwiches, knishes, and soups galore. “The menu really doesn’t change that much,” manager Kevin Albinder explained. “If anything, we’ll add little things, but it’s all still in the realm of the Jewish-style deli.”
While the meals on the menu stay constant, their prices do not. Most notable is the monetary evolution of the pastrami sandwich. Independent calculations conclude that based on beef’s current $6.04 per pound retail value and the weekly fifteen to twenty-five thousand pounds needed to sastisfy customer demand, the restaurant spends up to $151,000 on fatty navel beef every week.
However, traveling miles upon miles and waiting hours upon hours to purchase the $19.95 sandwich was not always the common customer experience. Jake remembers seeing “a menu from 1961 where the [pastrami sandwich] price was under a buck,” corroborated by an archival New York Times article that states Katz’s sandwiches sold for seventy cents that year. It may have cost four or five dollars nine years later, if Jake’s recollection is true; in 1970 the retail value of beef was 98 cents per pound, according to uninflated United States Department of Agriculture data. One can comfortably assume that Jake’s price estimation is accurate, considering the weighty stagflation America faced during that period.
It took approximately sixty years for the beef retail value to stabilize in such a manner. Decades earlier in 1902, just fourteen years after Katz’s founding, beef sold for 20 to 24 cents per pound. Though unadjusted for inflation and therefore seemingly inconsequential by modern standards, these prices were considered astronomically high at the turn of the nineteenth century, spurring volatile riots and protests throughout the predominantly Jewish Lower East Side neighborhood. “There is just a natural rising of [beef] prices,” Jake insists. “If you compare [historical prices] to basic inflation, we’re actually relative” to the adjusted prices.
His assertion is correct; inflating the aforementioned variables according to 2015’s currency power reveals extremely small price margins, meaning that although the steep $19.95 bill seems extravagant, it is on par with rising currency rates. The 1902 retail values respectively approximate from $4.79 to $5.75 once inflated, and the price of beef per pound in 1970 grows from $0.98 to $5.99; comparably, the current 2015 beef retail value is $6.04. This makes today’s costs per pound respectively $1.25 or 29 cents greater than 1904’s variables, and only five cents greater than 1970’s.
United States Department of Agriculture data spanning 45 years reflects this steady increase in beef retail value. Slow, continuous growth pulled 1970’s non-aggrandized $0.98 per pound up to three uninflated dollars per pound in 2000. This shows that in just over the thirty years the cost nearly tripled, swelling with a 208 percent increase. Adjusted for inflation, however, this Y2K quota continues to prove Katz’s contemporary sky-high pastrami price to be entirely reasonable: 2000’s quota, when adjusted for inflation, shows yet another example of small margins. The difference is approximately two dollars cheaper than today’s beef retail value.
Since 2010, the price per pound of beef in dollars has increased by a whopping 38 percent. “We had a major drought in the last couple years, so supply was incredibly limited, and demand was at an all-time high. The net result is, obviously, very high raw commodity prices, which in turn means high pastrami prices [in the restaurant]”, Jake explains knowingly. After all, he handles inventory and spends months evaluating the ordering schedule based on holiday schedules and available sourcing options for his produce.
Operating a family business that offers full benefits to its busboys is no easy task. It helps that Jake’s uncle Fred Austin, one of the restaurant’s co-owners, holds the deed to Katz’s Delicatessen of Houston Street. Ownership of the building allows for the menu’s elevated fares to account for earning back the meat’s retail cost, along with covering essential subsidiaries like the commodities cost of bread and oil, and paying for the uniforms, salaries and benefits of Katz’s 130 employees.
Complaining about the cost of living could qualify as a justifiable New York pastime, yet even the most frugal of patrons cannot resist trying the beefy deliciousness at least once — whether it be at Katz’s or other famed delicatessens in the borough. Pastrami sandwiches range from $16.95 at Sarge’s Deli to $19.95 at 2nd Avenue Deli to $29.99 at Carnegie Deli. It seems that every pastrami sandwich demands commensurate prices, regardless of one’s preference of or proximity to the Lower East Side, Murray Hill, or Midtown.
Only a hearty mouthful of pastrami on rye at Katz’s is, as a first-time customer swooned, “moist, tender, and perfectly seasoned. Heaven in a bite!” Where else can one can sink his or her teeth into an old-fashioned sandwich whilst ogling Bill Clinton as he smiles from his photographic perch on the back wall, acting as the fuzzy reminder that only one place has presidential pastrami?
Scanning the bustling tables during the afternoon rush, Jake acknowledges that his “customers understand. Prices go up because they have to.” His family business’ profits and successes have remained unaffected by the “terrifying” decision to sell a sandwich costing greater than ten dollars. Their expanding clientele is obviously too voracious to deny themselves any of Katz’s gluttony greatness, and for good reason.
Served hot, the pastrami sandwich is worth every dime of its 1,995 cents. Some try and take it to go, betraying its beauty by letting it cool in a brown paper bag. “You take a sandwich home? It changes. I swear,” Shelly warned with a scolding glare. “However they steam it and prepare it and slice it, you eat it hot. That’s where it happens. As soon it leaves here, it starts changing.”
When facing the sandwich at one of Katz’s many tables, the adrenaline begins to build. Some people approach it with a knife and fork, erroneously trying to eat politely. This meat is anything but affable; pulsating in vibrant shades of red and pink, the layers of delicate beef command attention. Katz’s pastrami is a work of art, a masterpiece of culinary perfection suitable for neither the timid nor the tame. It yearns to be held, and feels overwhelming satisfaction when firmly squeezed with both hands, condiments oozing and meat splaying with grandeur. If anything, it is symbolic. Swallowing Katz’s steaming pastrami literally fills customers with the riveting history of the Lower East Side and all that downtown has weathered.
Simply, the only aspect of Katz’s Delicatessen that is subject to change is its prices. Uncontrollable external factors including economic depression, drought, and demand are to blame for the existence of this single nostalgic inconsistency, but it’s the centuplicate constancy of one sandwich that so perfectly preserves the nostalgia of the nation’s most epochal immigrant neighborhood.
Walking into Katz’s morning, noon, or night is an emotional experience. Jake witnesses oracle moments unfold constantly, involving restaurant regulars, strangers, and everyone in between. “Food is such an important part of our memory,” he observed. “You smell something and it immediately brings you to a place. And whatever that is for you, whatever that moment is for you, is unique to you, and that’s what makes it special.”
Some might think the nostalgic magic embedded within the walls of the restaurant is imaginary. Others may argue that the pastrami is simply just a delicious sandwich. They obviously have not been to Katz’s Delicatessen.
The data will always develop; the price will continually increase. But the recipe will never change. Cured, rubbed, smoked, boiled, and steamed, the schmaltz is embedded into the very meat that makes Katz’s unforgettable pastrami sandwich.
And that nostalgia is here to stay.
