What comes out of this tiny “deli” stall? Sandwiches of course! Sure they sell soup and chips and stuff but who cares. Shamas is all about sandwiches. I tried their ‘spicy turkey’ (which is really just “Cracked Pepper Mill Smoked Turkey Breast” from Boars Head) sandwich on a roll ($8) with hot peppers, cheese, mayo and some fixins. Yeah, you read that correctly, you order from the tiny stall and they still charge you $8! You aren’t even INSIDE when you order and they charge $8! It’s amazing what people will get away here. Aside from the horrible pricing, the sandwiches are tasty, a bit above par. The bread is nice and soft and the ingredients are fresh. The sandwich’s on the menu are a bit boring and there’s not much to challenge your taste buds, but if you’re looking for something dependable, it’s a good decision.

The ‘deli’:

“Spicy Turkey”:

Pastrami:

The menu has all the deli basics: egg sandwiches, omelets, cold meat and vegetable platters, burgers, fries, soup and dessert. The setup is familiar but the specifics are sometimes different. For example, for $8.50 you can get a cold plate of “chopped Vegetables with cottage cheese and sour cream.” (yuck!) Most of the menu is sandwiches and breakfast foods, and there ain’t nothin’ wrong with that!

I sampled three sandwiches: the tuna salad ($7.25), the pastrami on rye ($8.50) and the BLT ($6.00). All were absolutely fantastic. Each sandwich is a bit basic: just simple ingredients served on regular uneventful bread. Each sandwich was simple and heavenly.

The tuna salad was the best I’ve ever had. I don’t usually order it because it tends to be too mushy, too lemony, full of chopped vegetables or just kind of soggy and gross. This one was none of the above. It was balanced and flavorful, simply prepared on rye bread with a tomato slice and some iceberg lettuce. It did suffer from a bit of flavor creep, but given how tasty the fillings were, I was glad to have a little extra at the end.

The pastrami was on par with the best in the city (2nd ave Deli and Katz). It’s that good. It’s warm and buttery, served on plain rye bread (best complimented by a healthy dose of mustard.) With flavor just short of Katz’s and almost half the price, bring your pastrami loving tourist friends here.

To finish the hat trick, the BLT was amazing. Again they used simple ingredients: toasted white bread with a slather of mayo, iceberg lettuce, bacon and tomatoes. It works beautifully. It was crunchy and flavorful. The veggies do a perfect balancing act with the intensity of the mayo and bacon.

Who knew amazing sandwiches could be this simply prepared? Eisenbergs is a welcome relief from the legions of foofoo chefs who think that good sandwiches require portobellos sauted in aged balsamic, on imported focaccia. Ugh. Time to get back to basic’s people! These are the sandwiches your mom couldn’t make this good. Dig in.

Eisenberg scored high marks across execution, with low-to mid strategy sandwiches.

Triumphant Tuna Salad:

Powerful Pastrami:

BBBLTTT (Best Basic BLT Totally Triumphs):

Delicious

Corned Beef

Pastrami

Turkey

Chicken

The pastrami at Katz is absolutely incredible. It’s huge. It’s fatty and meaty. It’s warm, buttery and soft. It’s already bite-sized. It’s stronger than opium. It’s exactly what the doctor ordered, all the time. The pastrami here is so good that all other things in life fade away. For those biting moments, everything is awash in a golden glow. Life is a sacred gift. But, eventually the taste disappears and you realize you left the oven/iron/torch on, but you don’t care, you go back in for another bite. It’s that good.

The pastrami is good. The mustard is good. The pickles are tasty. I have no idea what the bread taste like, only that it does not distract too much from the incredible pastrami and mustard. Possible downsides? Oh, maybe the daytime tourist crush, the insanely high prices and the fatty meat induced stomach pains. It’s all worth it for a few moments touching god.

My safety blanket


is the warmest, safest blanket.


All other blankets don’t compare


to my amazing pastrami slices


I’m warm.

We walked over, stood in the crowded foyer full of tourists and people waiting for one of the few tables and ordered at the counter. Like Katz, we got a few bites as samples, which were buttery, warm and delicious. I think they give you these tiny unsatisfying bites just to peak your hunger before you eat. Then you go up to pay and are twice as excited: these sandwiches are damn expensive (and thus better be mind-blowing). A pastrami on rye and a tongue on rye ran just under $40! That’s nearly $20/’wich. That is insane. These had better be incredible.

After a short walk through the blistering cold, we opened our bag to reveal (cow tongue on left, pastrami on right):

Which were quickly unwrapped (tongue, pastrami)…

The entire spread (With pickles, mustard and Russian dressing) looks like a lunchtime dream:

Oh baby, that pastrami is overflowing!

The pastrami was buttery and delicious. I doctored both sandwiches with a thin layer of Dijon mustard and took myself to tasty-town. The pastrami was delicious. Not quite as good as Katz, but pretty damn tasty. This was my first time having tongue and it was good. I’m not sure that I’ll leap at the opportunity to get it again (especially when it’s staring at you in full tongue-shaped force from behind the glass case). It’s a little buttery, and “decent but not amazing,” remarked my colleague, the resident tongue expert.

The 2nd ave deli is serious sandwiches. No foo foo tapenades, sun-dried tomatoes or any vegetables of any kind. This kind of basic, one-ingredient at a time focus is impressive. Twice impressive when you consider that most sandwiches these days have tons and tons of ingredients. This return to quality over quantity is fantastic and I cannot praise the 2nd ave deli enough for their dedication to the art. I just wish they weren’t so damn expensive.

My only complaint about this little operation is that they bill themselves as the “last word on sandwiches,” AHEM, I beg to differ. Maybe your fame has gotten to you Tommy-boy: you ain’t god, yet.

Without further adieu, here’s ‘Wichcraft’s pastrami sandwich. Why they refuse to call it a “Ruben,” I’ll never understand. It was crunchy and delicious, if a little skimpy on the pastrami. All the flavors get a turn to be noticed and none of them dominated the taste. I especially liked the mustard flavor at the end of each bite.

Ingredients:

• pastrami
• grilled rye bread
• swiss cheese
• sauerkraut
• mustard

Ingredients:

• Pastrami
• Swiss cheese
• Coleslaw
• Russian dressing
• Spicy mustard
• Rye bread