A new book celebrates 125 years of pastrami.
In the age of Instagram, it’s likely several billion pictures of Katz’s Delicatessen now exist, be they snaps of sawdust floors and skilled corned beef slicers taken by Japanese tourists, or family keepsakes of Grandpa showing off the knoblewurst he loved in his Lower East Side youth.
Indeed, we’d wager the Jewish deli at the corner of Houston and Ludlow streets is, upon its 125th anniversary, such an internationally known culinary institution that most of you’d be able to recognize some of its smallest details: the pink-red neon of the “100% all-beef frankfurter” sign, the hanging poster pointing out where Harry met Sally, the wonderful peppered rind of the pastrami peeking out between soft sliced rye.
That’s why it’s all the more impressive that the photos you see here are so stunning. They come from the book Autobiography of a Delicatessen, published by Bauer and Dean, with photographs by Baldomero Fernandez and an introduction by Jake Dell, who now runs this landmark with his father, Alan.
Told mainly through Fernandez’s images, the book is a visual day in the life of one of the rare places that manages to be both delicious and a reminder of a Manhattan long past.
[nggallery template=carouselag id=44]Want to see the Katz pictures that didn’t print? Check out the slideshow.
