I am a firm believer that a hand-cut delicatessen sandwich is superior to one sliced on a machine. This shouldn't come as a surprise. Almost anything done by hand in the kitchen is superior to electronic counterparts. Think about a head of lettuce sliced in a shredder versus one cut with a knife, or hand-formed hamburgers vs. those pressed from a mold. The hand can feel. It can sense soft and hard, tender and tough, and it can respond accordingly. A machine can't feel, just like it can't taste, or love.
In my new book, Save the Deli, you'll read in the first chapter about the night at New York's famed Katz's Delicatessen when I got to step behind the legendary counter for a shift of hand-slicing pastrami sandwiches. It was an exhilarating experience, and it taught me a thing or two about the nuances of cutting deli meats.
The alpha cutter at Katz's is Mr. Bienevenido Quiros--aka "Beni", a native of Puerto Rico--who has worked in nearly a dozen Jewish delis around New York City since the late 1960's. He first sliced by machine but learned to hand cut at Lou G. Siegel's, a former stalwart of the garment district. "The [meat at Katz's] is so good because when you slice by hand the juice stays in the meat," Beni told me that night. When you put pastrami on a slicing machine, it is pressed against the blade, and the precious moisture, which makes the difference between a dry sandwich and a succulent one, often ends up dripping onto the counter. Thicker slices retain more moisture; thinner, machine slices dry out quicker.
At Langer's Delicatessen, in Los Angeles--home to the greatest pastrami sandwich in America--owner Norm Langer took a blackened piece of pastrami out of the steam box, slapped it on the wooden counter, and began methodically slicing, flipping the meat over and around, excising tough connective tissue. "When you cut it on a machine, you won't cut out this," Norm said, removing a slimy yellow membrane with a twist of the knife. "This thing is like chewing a racquetball. It has the consistency of a diaphragm. If you cut your meat on a machine, that is going to be in your sandwich."
If there's a hand-slicing Mecca out there, it's definitely Montreal, where every single delicatessen carves their smoked meat (Montreal's spicy, smoked brisket), by hand. To see this in action you need to visit Schwartz's, the tiny, cramped, Romanian-style Jewish deli on Blvd. St. Laurent.
Schwartz's main cutter is Joao "Johnny" Goncalves, a stoutly built immigrant from the Azores with full cheeks and a big smile. He's been cutting smoked meat at Schwartz's for well over a dozen years, and can carve the requisite 5 oz for a sandwich in five seconds, making thousands of sandwiches each day. The strain has left him with tennis elbow, and condition that's required him to wear an elastic brace and undergo surgery.