Savouring the multi-cultural food pie of New York

livemint.com:

Starry Night. My favourite queuing experience, undoubtedly, is one that involves food. It is at Katz’s, one of New York’s most famous food institutions.

Katz is the city’s oldest diner (1888)—it made an appearance in When Harry Met Sally (1989), and is still known for serving one of the best sandwiches in the city. I am in line to try one of their signatures: pastrami on rye. The wait, like the other places in NYC, is worth it.

The sandwich is delicious—tender pink meat with a slight crust, a generous amount of mustard and rye bread that is soft and yet manages to hold the meat in place, with pickles by the side. Pastrami on rye is not just Katz’s crown jewel, but that of most of the Jewish delis here. New York’s “signature sandwich" has two claimants for its creation—Katz and a Lithuanian Jewish immigrant named Sussman Volk at his Delancey Street butcher shop turned deli.

Whatever the origin, this sandwich is possibly my greatest introduction to Jewish American cuisine. Besides Katz, I try a pastrami sandwich at Tal’s Bagels, which has an impressive array of bagel toppings. Bagels are another typical New York food, also a creation of the city’s Jewish community, with roots in Poland.

Another dish that owes its origins to Polish Ashkenazi Jews is the bialys. It is often lumped together with the bagel but is unlike it—though flat and circular, it has a small scooped out portion at the top, is baked, and very rarely is filled with the deli toppings. My introduction to bialys is thanks to Seth Zakula, my guide on the Immigrant New York Food Tour in the Lower East Side.