Mr. and Mrs. Concord spent a few days in New York City last week. It was a great trip, made even better by our wonderful hostess Sheila. We explored cool neighborhoods, went to museums, and ate some great meals. We even met a freegan! I would almost say it was the perfect mini-vacation, except for one thing: I failed to find the perfect pastrami sandwich.
One of my complaints about living in Seattle is the lack of decent sandwiches, especially pastrami. I don't mean run-of-the-mill, stringy, supermarket-quality pastrami; you can find that shit anywhere. I'm talking about savory, thick-sliced, melt-in-your-mouth pastrami, the kind that can only be found in an authentic Jewish deli. One of the few places I've experienced this stuff is in New York City, so I made it clear to everyone that my one goal during our visit was to find said sandwich. A plan was made to go to the legendary 2nd Avenue Deli on the next-to-last day of the trip; in fact, the whole day was planned around this event. As luck would have it, we spent too much time at MoMA and had to postpone the quest until our last day. No problem, I thought- we weren't leaving until 2pm, so we could still go to the deli for an early lunch and then head straight for the airport. This is where things started to go horribly wrong.
NYC was hit with a snowstorm that day. Undaunted by the weather, we packed our bags and trudged through the slushy mess toward the subway station. While we were on the subway, the conductor announced that our stop was closed, so we had to get off on a different stop and walk several blocks, dragging our luggage through the snow. When we finally arrived at the address, the deli was nowhere to be found. I had been using an old guidebook, and the deli had since moved to a different location. It seemed as though some divine force was determined to prevent me from having my pastrami sandwich. Anyway, we had a plane to catch, so we settled for a quick bite at a coffee shop and took a cab to Penn Station. The cab sped through countless city blocks and then took a left turn down a small side street. I gazed through the frost-covered window as we passed by an image that would forever be burned into my memory: the 2nd Avenue Deli! The damn place was taunting me even as we were leaving the city. Alas, the sandwich of my dreams had eluded me once again.
One final note: our flight was cancelled, so I had to sit, pastrami-less, for several hours in the Newark airport with the knowledge that I could've had my sandwich after all.
