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Cured meat and broiled beef in New York.
Start at the one pastrami counter nobody disputes, then let four other delis argue with it about fat, the kosher rule and smoke. Cross into an appetizing store, where the fish is the order and the bagel is only scaffolding. Then go uptown to the steak, which opens on a porterhouse two critics cannot agree about, and finish with the mutton chop and the tabletop grill that answer the steakhouse question two different ways.
Everybody starts at Katz's, where Robert Sietsema calls the pastrami the superior deli meat and ranks the rest of the case for you, and the cured meat is the first half of this guide. Four other counters then take a position on it: Pastrami Queen cures leaner and Hannah Albertine will tell you which of the two to pick, the 2nd Ave Deli kitchen works under the kosher rule that decides its whole menu, Mile End cures the Montreal way with more sweetness and less smoke, and Frankel's in Greenpoint runs the deli trade and the appetizing trade off one counter. Then cross into an appetizing store, which is a different shop with a different license: at Barney Greengrass the sturgeon is the order and the bagel is scaffolding. The steak half opens on one porterhouse, because Pete Wells took Peter Luger to zero stars in 2019 and Willa Moore rated it 8.6 five years later, and the two reviews together describe one steak. Keens is the room to book, and Cote grills dry-aged beef at your table. Give the delis a morning each and the steakhouses their own evenings.
Everybody starts at Katz's, and the four delis after it are arguing with the cure.
Eat the pastrami at Katz's Delicatessen first, because every counter below is a position on it. Hannah Albertine turns those positions into a decision you can act on at Pastrami Queen: she finds the meat there leaner than Katz's and tells you to pick on that alone. Fatty against lean is the first fork, and the kosher kitchen at 2nd Ave Deli (Murray Hill), the Montreal cure at Mile End Delicatessen and the counter at Frankel's Delicatessen that works both trades pull it three more ways. A weekend settles it.
- Katz's Delicatessen
Robert Sietsema, in Eater, ranks the case for you: pastrami first, roast brisket second, corned beef third, and the sleeper is the knoblewurst, a garlic sausage he calls "absolutely delicious and garlicky as all get out". Buy a hot dog from the counter while you queue, which is what the regulars do. Take the green tomato pickles and skip the fries.
- Pastrami QueenUpper East Side
The build never varies: rye cut half an inch thick, brown mustard, pickles on the side, and matzo ball soup with one big ball and plenty of noodles. The room is a counter and a few metal tables, so in good weather carry the bag the four blocks west to Central Park.
- 2nd Ave Deli (Murray Hill)Murray Hill
Kosher, which means no cheese on the pastrami and no cream in the soup, so what is left has to carry itself. Order pastrami on rye sliced thin, matzo ball soup and franks in blankets, and make it a late lunch, because the kitchen stops early.
- Mile End Delicatessen
Montreal smoked meat is cured brisket, hand sliced, and Sietsema names the difference as more sweetness, more ruby color and less smoke. Order it on rye knowing it is a different sandwich. The Ruth Wilensky beside it is the salami one.
- Frankel's DelicatessenGreenpoint
Two brothers in Greenpoint run the deli side and the appetizing side off one counter, which almost nobody does. Combo #1 is the crossover: pastrami-cured salmon with dill cucumber and scallion cream cheese. Fifteen seats, and McCarren Park when they are taken.
An appetizing store is not a deli, and the difference decides your whole order.
Barney Greengrass sells sturgeon and treats hot pastrami as an afterthought, and the reason is a rule: a kosher deli cannot put fish and dairy beside meat, so the fish and the cream cheese got a separate shop with its own name. Will Hartman's reason for going back is not even the fish: "The fine-tuned shtick is why we love coming back to Barney Greengrass again and again." Russ & Daughters is the downtown version of the same trade, four generations deep on East Houston. The Pickle Guys on Grand Street is the last piece of it, a barrel shop where the length of the cure is your order. Come here hungry for fish and not for meat, and the morning works.
- Barney GreengrassUpper West Side
Put ninety percent of your attention on the smoked fish. Order the sturgeon scrambled with eggs and onions, or ask for nova in it, which is how Anthony Bourdain took his. Take an appetizing platter for the table and add the off-menu latkes when the waiter tells you to. Cash only, and they will want the table back.
- Russ & DaughtersLower East Side · $$
Ruth Rogers comes from London and eats her New York breakfast here on a scarcity argument: eat the thing you could not have anywhere else. Take a number, order the bagel with cream cheese and smoked salmon, and expect to eat it standing, because there are no seats.
- The Pickle GuysLower East Side
Time in the barrel is the whole menu: a natural salt brine with garlic and spices, no preservatives, up to three months, and the longer it sits the sourer it gets. Order a full sour and a pickled pineapple. For the two weeks before Passover the shop grinds fresh horseradish outside its own door.
Make a walk of it
Do the downtown half in one walk: pastrami at Katz's on East Houston, smoked fish and a number at Russ & Daughters two blocks along, then Grand Street for a full sour at The Pickle Guys to cut all of it.
The steakhouse argument is one porterhouse, and two critics cannot agree about it.
Pete Wells took Peter Luger Steak House to zero stars in the Times in October 2019, down from the two Frank Bruni gave it in 2007: "What gnaws at me every time I eat a Luger porterhouse is the realization that it's just another steak, and far from the best New York has to offer." Willa Moore went back for The Infatuation five years later and rated it 8.6. Read the two of them side by side and one steak comes into focus: crusted on the top, barely cooked underneath, and finishing on a plate hot enough that the servers wear belt buzzers and run it to the table. Then book Keens Steakhouse, where 45,000 clay churchwarden pipes still hang off the ceiling and the mutton chop comes off a thousand-degree broiler.
- Peter Luger Steak HouseWilliamsburg
Order the porterhouse sized for one fewer than your party, take the iceberg wedge under its slab of thick-cut bacon, and add the German fried potatoes and the creamed spinach. They take cash and debit, and the MICHELIN inspector says to bring cash. Skip the shrimp cocktail and the house steak sauce, which Wells has found tasting of ketchup and horseradish since the 1990s.
- Keens Steakhouse
Molly Fitzpatrick's reason for the chop is the one to keep: "the kind of dish you'd be hard-pressed to find elsewhere in our current century." If 26 ounces beats you, the specials board carries a Taste of Mutton at appetizer size. Book the dining room, or come on your own and take the walk-in bar, and skip the king's cut of prime rib.
Cote and Minetta Tavern answer the steakhouse question without being one.
Simon Kim hangs the beef in an aging room downstairs at COTE and your server oils the grill and cooks it at your table, and the MICHELIN inspector describes exactly how that works: "Meats are first presented raw for you to admire; your server then oils the grill and expertly cooks them." At Minetta Tavern the beef arrives as a burger and a cote de boeuf in a MacDougal Street room Keith McNally took over in 2009. Neither is cheap: Minetta's cote de boeuf for two ran $189 when The Infatuation priced it in April 2025.
- COTEFlatiron
Cote is a Korean answer to the steakhouse, and it holds one MICHELIN star. Run the Butcher's Feast and the Farmer's Feast together if you have a few people, which is how Dominique Roy orders it and the only way vegetables reach the table.
- Minetta TavernGreenwich Village
The Black Label burger is dry-aged prime on a Balthazar brioche bun, built by the chefs who now run Le Veau d'Or. Ruth Rogers comes straight here off the plane for the grilled rib-eye. On your own, take the French dip and the frites and skip brunch.
Jeff's take.
My note on Keens is two words, an institution. That still holds, and the mutton chop is why. What I did not expect is that the deli half is the better argument. A lean cure against a fatty one is a real decision with a different right answer for each person, and Hannah Albertine is the only writer I found who states it as a choice you make at the counter. On the beef I would book Keens before Luger and say so plainly, and I would read the Wells review first either way, because it is the sharpest piece of restaurant criticism anyone has written about a New York steakhouse. And buy a full sour on Grand Street to carry, because five days of cured meat needs acid and nobody puts enough on the plate.
Questions, answered
Katz's or Pastrami Queen?
It depends which cure you want, and one writer has put the choice plainly. Hannah Albertine, reviewing Pastrami Queen for The Infatuation in November 2024: The meat here tastes slightly leaner than what you'll find at Katz's, so if that's your preference, prioritize this pastrami sandwich over the one at that legendary downtown deli.
1 Fatty and hand-carved, stay downtown at Katz's Delicatessen, where Robert Sietsema ranks the pastrami first of everything in the case.2
as of Sep 2026
Zero stars and a rave on the same porterhouse. Which is right?
Both, and that is the useful part. Pete Wells rated Peter Luger Steak House Satisfactory in October 2019, which is zero stars, and his charge was that the crust sits only on the top while the underside barely cooks.3 Willa Moore rated it 8.6 in June 2024 and explains the same mechanism as a feature, because the plate finishes the steak, which is why the servers wear belt buzzers and run.4 Her ordering rule is the one to take with you: party of four, steak for three.
as of Sep 2026
Is there a Peter Luger I can actually get into?
There is a room that plates the same dinner, and The Infatuation's steakhouse guide names it: Schlag, German potatoes, a sliced porterhouse served sizzling on a tilted plate. Sounds like Peter Luger, right? Well it isn't. It's Wolfgang's. This chain was founded by a longtime Luger employee, and, while it lacks the 19th-century ambience, the steaks are just as good.
5 That is Bryan Kim's call and not mine. The room on this page you can book tonight is COTE.
as of Sep 2026
What is an appetizing store?
It is the shop that sells what a kosher deli cannot put beside meat: the smoked fish and the dairy. So at Barney Greengrass the sturgeon, nova, whitefish salad and cream cheese carry the menu and the bagels underneath are dense scaffolding, and Will Hartman tells you to spend ninety percent of your attention on the fish.6 Russ & Daughters on East Houston is the same trade, run by the same family since 1914.7
as of Sep 2026
Is Montreal smoked meat just pastrami?
No, and ordering it as pastrami is how people end up disappointed. Robert Sietsema describes what Mile End Delicatessen does with the same brisket: a slightly different constellation of spices, a bit more sweetness and ruby color, and, in general, less smokiness.
2 Order it for the sweetness and the lighter smoke, and get the Ruth Wilensky alongside if you want the salami.
as of Sep 2026
How this was written
Jeff's argument, filled in from the sourced entries. Every room here has its own sourced entry, and nothing on this page adds a fact that is not on one of them. Last read through Sep 2026.