The owners of David’s Brisket House in Brooklyn were probably wise to choose a different name for the new deli they opened in East Williamsburg late last year, even though the new place, Pastrami Masters, adopted its core menu from David’s.
When New Yorkers hear the word brisket these days, they tend to think of brick pits, stacks of cordwood, neon Shiner Beers signs, and Willie and Waylon singing in the background. Those associations are relatively recent ones locally, dating to the renaissance of the smoked-meat sciences in Texas and the national fame of pit masters like Aaron Franklin in Austin.
Before brisket was synonymous with barbecue, its meaning in the five boroughs was the one that you now encounter mainly around the Jewish holidays: a flat slab of beef breast cooked in a closed, humid environment for hours, at which point it not only falls apart unprovoked but also makes its own gravy.
That dish has long been one of the chief attractions at David’s Brisket House. Although David’s has had many owners and probably other names as well, it is thought that the deli was founded by two Jewish men around the middle of the last century, before most of the remaining Jews in Bedford-Stuyvesant left for the suburbs, back when a Brooklyn deli could announce itself as a brisket residence and everybody would know just what that meant.
At David’s, braised brisket is sliced and stacked into hero rolls, hard rolls and rye. Some of the locals who meander in from Nostrand Avenue — although David’s has occasionally had bouts of fame and sometimes draws visitors from Manhattan, most of its trade comes from longtime inhabitants of Bedford-Stuyvesant — prefer their brisket in another of its forms: pickled, as corned beef, or, better yet, brined and smoked under a jacket of pepper and other spices, as pastrami. Still others like to combine multiple brisket treatments in a single sandwich.
Fuad Hassan and the other owners of David’s imported this formula more or less intact for Pastrami Masters, making one striking change before opening. The storefront they had leased on Grand Street was being vacated by a counter-service Lebanese restaurant called Wafa’s Express. There may not have been enough fans of hummus and baba ghanouj to keep Wafa’s in business, but there were some fans nonetheless, and Mr. Hassan decided to try to hold on to them by fusing the Lebanese menu, almost in its entirety, to the Jewish deli offerings. Pastrami Masters is not kosher, but it is halal; Mr. Hassan, like the other owners, is a Muslim who was born in Yemen.
The mastery of Pastrami Masters does not extend to the actual brining of corned beef or the smoking of pastrami. Like most other deli owners in New York, Mr. Hassan buys both meats from a supplier, although he does cook them on site, and he says he gives the pastrami an extra rubdown of seasoning.
One effect of the name Pastrami Masters is that pastrami is now the uncontested star. It is Diana Ross, while the corned beef and brisket are the Supremes. Falafel and hummus are in the backing band.
This is roughly how I see the menu, too. The corned beef tends to be steamed slightly too long, until it is a little pallid and spongy. Mustard revives it part of the way. What restores it almost completely is being made into a Reuben.
The brisket is soft and juicy, even without extra gravy, but it always seems to be missing something. That something could be pastrami. Stacked one on top of the other, the two meats round each other out; the pastrami makes the brisket more interesting, and loses some of its salty intensity in the process.
But the highest use of the brisket at Pastrami Masters is an easily overlooked entry on the menu called the Brooklyn cheese steak: hot brisket, gravy and melted American cheese on a hero roll with fried peppers and onions. This is one of those treasures of bodega cuisine, the food created by unsung meat slicers and egg scramblers using standard ingredients found in and around the deli case.
The most celebrated example of bodega cuisine in New York is the chopped cheese, which shares some characteristics with the Brooklyn cheese steak. Unlike a chopped cheese, the Brooklyn cheese steak doesn’t have lettuce and tomatoes on it. The crunch of lettuce wouldn’t be welcome on top of the brisket, but the savory support of sautéed peppers and onions most definitely is, as is the polite sharpness of American cheese.
When Pastrami Masters finally trots out its breakfast menu, some time in the next month or so, it will begin offering another classic of bodega cuisine: the pastrami, egg and cheese sandwich. If it is made the same way as the one that David’s Brisket House has served for longer than anyone remembers, it will be a compelling way to start the day.
Like the other sandwiches, it will be improved if you request thick slices of pastrami. Deli-style rotary slicers are used, and when I haven’t specified a thickness, my pastrami has sometimes been sliced too thin. Thicker slices seem to give the sandwich greater resistance, which is important with meat that has been steamed into submission as thoroughly as it has at Pastrami Masters.
I wish the pastrami and corned beef were sliced with knives, as they are at Katz’s Delicatessen. On the other hand, Pastrami Masters makes sandwiches in four sizes, not just a single one the size of a hiking boot. Neither deli uses rye worth singing about. As for the pastrami, if it were not for the different slicing techniques, I’d call it a tie.
The Lebanese food was more convincing before the change of ownership. The falafel lately has been densely packed and gummy; makdous, baby eggplants stuffed with spiced chopped walnuts, have been bland and rubbery; the dips and salads have wanted salt and another squeeze of lemon. Lamb shawarma is still wonderful, though, so thickly seasoned with cloves, pepper, cinnamon and other spices that it is almost furry. And while the kenafeh I had gave the impression of having been stashed in the dessert case too long, the baklava is still sweetly evocative, doused with just enough rose water to give you the sensation of lying on a bed near an open window next to a rosebush on a warm night in June.
These are nice embellishments, but when you go to Pastrami Masters your main objective will be one form of brisket or another served in some old-fashioned New York way. This is not, to be clear, a modern, artisanal product of the kind that people now associate with Brooklyn, with meat from weird-looking heritage breeds and Levantine spices that flew to the United States in their own business-class seat. For that kind of pastrami sandwich, now that Harry & Ida’s is gone, your best bet is lunch at the new Hometown BBQ in Industry City, where the meat is smoked on site and sliced as thick as dominoes.
It is very good, but it has a little more Texas in it than the archetypal skyscraper sandwich from a New York deli, which is what you get at Pastrami Masters. Naturally, a full line of Dr. Brown’s canned sodas is available. As always, Cel-Ray with hot pastrami on rye is a beverage pairing as harmonious as Muscadet with oysters.
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