Washington, a pastrami mecca? Taste it for yourself: Over the past year, pedigreed chefs have taken on the challenge of curing, spicing and smoking their own and have been showcasing it on trend-driven menus.
At DGS, the new "craft" delicatessen in Dupont Circle, Barry Koslow set out to create a showstopper pastrami. Spike Gjerde serves a Reubenlike sandwich with house-made pastrami at his new Baltimore eatery, Artifact Coffee. Adam Sobel took time out from butter-poaching steaks at Georgetown's Bourbon Steak to perfect his pastrami and is dishing it up through March, At his eponymous market a few blocks away, Jamie Stachowski stuffs 11 / 2 pounds of his smoked pastrami into a behemoth sandwich.
We hit the pastrami circuit to investigate, but first we paid a visit to a Washington institution: Wagshal's Delicatessen. There, owner Bill Fuchs set the bar years ago, long before pastrami became highbrow.
Advertisement
The basic formula for pastrami-making is this: Beef brisket is brined for about a week in a salt solution with sodium nitrite (to preserve color) and pickling spices, such as bay leaf, mustard seed, coriander seed, peppercorns, allspice and cloves. Then it gets crusted with a peppercorn-and-coriander-based spice mix and smoked for hours. After that, the meat is steamed until tender.
Some chefs adhere to the formula; others deviate. Some slice it razor-thin; some prefer it a half-inch thick. Adjusting processing times, devising proprietary spice mixes and combining smoking woods are all ways to stamp a brisket as their own.
"Everyone has a visceral idea of pastrami from the first time they ate it," says Stachowski. "So you're trying to measure up to every ... person's memory."
Share this articleShareHere are contenders, in sandwich form, that may well meet your expectations. Or even surpass them.
More from Food:
ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7uK3SoaCnn6Sku7G70q1lnKedZLmqssSsq7KklWSzsLvDaJucq12lrrTA0ZqkomWilsFuvMCcomhqYGaAcHyRaGhqZ5abr3exxGuaZm9iZ7FufZCeaWZwkm2xbrGPm2xymWGXhaZ%2BwJiqraeirnupwMyl