Mile End Deli

If you're like me, you took note (took extreme note?) of the tantalizing, lusciously alluring photo of a smoked meat on rye, in New York Magazine a few months ago, in advance of the opening of what promised to be New York's first purveyor of real Montreal smoked meat sandwiches.

Well, Mile End is open, and it is a smash! This is the real deal, we are talking some serious smoked meat here.

Hey, I had told myself after I saw the advance photo, that they had doctored it--it couldn't look or taste that good in person. I knew they probably used the best looking possible sandwich worth of meat from the mile of meat they must have smoked to get it. I told myself, "Don't Ron, don't do it--don't expect it to look or taste like that. You always get so disappointed."

Let me tell you--the sandwich looked precisely like the one in the picture!! And it tasted like the best smoked meat I ever had in Montreal. OMG!!

They are hand-carving the meat (a kind of brown/black/burgundy affair), and it is lean, and it is thick, and it is full of smoky/nutty/pastrami/jewish/heaven-ness. The last time I saw meat hand-sliced this beautifully, and tasting this good was when Pastrami King was still open in Kew Gardens.

The place is cute-cute. It is so far open only for lunch (till 4PM), but they promise to be open for dinner by summer. It is crowded and only has four tables and a small counter. That they have a take-out window on the street is a joke--they're not even close to keeping up with the orders inside. Hey, I know this is Boerum Hill and not Times Square, but they gotta get a coupla experienced deli men in there to accompany the slackers from the neighborhood behind the counter. I'm worried somebody might get killed from the frustration of those waiting for their sandwiches. Listen, the guy carving the smoked meat looks like he's playing with an erector kit, and hasn't quite learned the architecture yet.

But don't let that daunt you--this is one of the best sandwiches in the city, and rivaling the greats of the deli world. Rush out to Hoyt Street, just off Atlantic Ave, and welcome the arrival of an honest-to-goodness, take-you-back-to-the-old-days deli sandwich. And thank g-d for it.