The Perfect Sandwich

Pajamas, Hot Dogs, and Mustard

My dad was a two job guy. We lived in a representative, working class neighborhood in Brooklyn, which was to me, the paradise of the world. Representative I learned years later meant not just Jewish people, like us, but an equal mix of almost everything else. The working class is obvious.

My dad worked at a brokerage house on Wall Street as a runner from 9 to 3. That was his first job. His second job was at the Morgan Annex branch of the US Post Office, in mid-town Manhattan. He had started at the PO as a teen-ager, and was in it for the longest possible haul, a modest pension being the carrot at the end of his rainbow. His hours on that job were 4 pm to mid-night. He rode the subway to work. He never owned a car. Once in a long while he got driven home.

Zingerman's

I have a vivid memory of my parents entertaining friends on Christmas Eve in 1982. My mother threw all of her Protestant tradition out the kitchen window and ordered Zingerman’s pastrami on rye sandwiches with giant garlic pickles. I was enthralled by this rebellion at age six, although I had no understanding of what pastrami was. I just knew it was special.

The ingenious ingredients and thoughtful, bountiful preparation is half of the magic pf the pastrami sandwich. The other half is the Zingerman's magic, the palpable feeling of community provided by the owners, Paul Saginaw and Ari Weinzweig, who instill in all of their endeavors a familial rhapsody. (I have dined at the Roadhouse and had Ari come to the table to fill up my water glass more than a few times…enough said). In a town high on intellect, Zingerman’s employment is looked upon as social cache (or junior college).

Sandwiches