A pastrami sandwich at Katz’s Deli. Photo by City Foodsters on Flickr

Other than the $1 slice of pizza, a bagel with lox, or a street cart hot dog, is there any food more synonymous with New York City than a pastrami sandwich on rye bread? The classic deli staple has been featured on Seinfeld, Saturday Night Live, and, of course, who can forget that famous scene in Katz’s from When Harry Met Sally? But pastrami’s legacy in the Big Apple began long before these pop culture moments.

By most accounts, pastrami arrived on the Lower East Side sometime between the 1880s and early 1900s, when “some 75,000 Jews left Romania and settled in New York City,” according to Serious Eats . First known in Romania and other Eastern European countries as “pastirma” or “pastrama,” the food was original

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