Food
Bee Wilson suggests sending salami missiles to Iraq
Published 20 January 2003
A consignment of salamis could soon be making its way to Iraq
The legend in the window of Katz's Deli, on the corner of a grungy part of the Lower East Side of New York, reads: "Send a Salami to Your Boy in the Army". Why salami? Well, it rhymes with army, for one thing. But if you tried sending pastrami to your boy in the army, you'd probably kill him with food poisoning by the time it arrived.
An uncut salami, though, is real marching food, as tough and durable as the dried pemmican that sustained fighting in the American civil war. And Katz's salami is typical American deli sausage - salty and more doggedly firm than its Italian equivalent. Over the coming months, it is strange to think that, unless George Dubbya has a sudden change of heart, a fair number of these indestructible loops will be patriotically despatched in the direction of Baghdad.
The slogan "Send a Salami to Your Boy in the Army" was first coined during the Second World War, when the three sons of the owner of Katz's Deli were all in the armed forces. Katz's, founded by Russian immigrants in 1888, prides itself on being New York's "oldest and best delicatessen" and the wartime connection is one more way to draw in the tourists, along with a recommendation letter from Bill Clinton and praise from Barbra Streisand and Bruce Willis. The proprietors milk the salami-army thing for all it's worth. The Katz's website claims that "anecdotal historians" (whoever they may be) even credit the deli with ending the Second World War. "When artillery units ran out of shells they lobbed Katz's aged salamis instead of shells. The enemy so thoroughly enjoyed this American treat that they surrendered en masse, hastening the end of the conflict." One fears that salami missiles lobbed at the Iraqis might not be taken in quite the same spirit.
But Katz's is famous mainly for less bellicose associations. This is the place where Meg Ryan loudly faked her orgasm in When Harry Met Sally over a deli sandwich (prompting another customer to comment, "I'll have what she's having"). That kind of publicity would keep it in business indefinitely, even if Katz's didn't make a very fine hot corned beef.
The day we ate lunch there, Sally's table - which is well signposted - was occupied by two very fat men in jeans, who were chowing their way through enormous plates of meat contentedly enough, though without showing any signs of either ecstasy or embarrassment. Like almost everyone else sitting at the Formica tables, they were eating French fries and beef. At Katz's, you can get brisket and pastrami and beef hot dogs and roast beef that's been incinerated to the shade of a brownstone apartment building. But best is the hot corned beef, which is what we British would call salt beef, pink, juicy and very salty, in vast half-pound portions on rye bread, costing about $10. Before your sandwich arrives, you get even more salt in the form of a plate of pickles: salted green tomatoes and two kinds of pickled cucumber.
All this salt gives you quite a thirst. Katz's equivalent of house wine is Dr Brown's soda, an old-fashioned brand of sweet fizzy pop that comes in root beer, cream soda and "cel-ray" tonic flavours. You eat a bite of your salty meat and take a sip of your sugary soda, and each bite gives you a new thirst, and each sip gives you a new appetite, until you can see yourself rapidly becoming as large as those kids who are suing McDonald's for making them obese.
But the clientele at Katz's come in all sizes. Next to us sat a nervous, rake-thin woman in a business suit, who arrived in a hurry and emphatically told the waitress that she must have a drink with no carbonates, before ordering a pound of thinly sliced turkey to go. The Lower East Side is a predominantly Jewish quarter of New York, but all races come to Katz's to munch knishes and kugel, united like children at a party in their greed. Its patriotic reputation is deserved: Katz's is very schmaltzy, very democratic, and very American.
Katz's Deli, 205 East Houston Street, New York, NY 10002 (tel: 212 254 2246; fax: 212 674 3270)
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