I'm going to try telling you about this place without blatantly plagiarizing their website. First off, I have never eaten any of their food so I cannot claim to know if they are actually "The Best since 1888" but I am going to make it my mission to check it out and update this post after my experience.
So anyway, a group of us stumbled very randomly upon this old brick building with a huge sign talking about "famous" this and "worlds best" that. Our friend Grant was saying he though it was a famous NYC landmark but to be honest, we had all just stumbled out of some bar around 4am somewhere in lower Manhattan, and Katz's "World Famous Delicatessen" was a lot less important than finding a good greasy slice and a cab uptown... The thing about New York is, almost EVERY pizza joint and corner deli self-indulgently proclaims their fame; sometimes it's written on their building, most of the time a nice neon glow enlightens us. If a place has been open for more than 10 years and has been visited by 1. Rudolph Giuliani 2. Leonardo DiCaprio 3. Tony Soprano, it meets the protocol for fame. With that being said, I was drunkenly skeptical of Katz's boastful broadcast of self-aggrandizement. The funny thing about New York, though, is that within the vast establishments claiming fame but offering mediocrity, cool little gems exist and are often not sought out, but stumbled upon.
Katz's Delicatessen has been around since 1888, and that's a really long time. I bet not a lot of Americans could tell you who Chester A. Arthur was... I'm sure most people would recognize the name, but how many people would know that he was The Prez of our great nation when Katz's doors opened up, covering the stench of piss drenched immigrants in the lower east side with the alluring perfume of "the old country", but not just the old country... EVERY old country. That part of town was a dumping ground for penniless pilgrims from Russian, Italy, Poland, Ireland and wherever else... and Katz's catered to them all.
In 1888 Jimmy Ryan lead the league with 16 home runs and New York won the pennant (philly was 3rd but still eight games over 500%), I know because I looked on Wikipedia. Maybe your great-great-great grandfather grabbed a big dill pickle and read the the scores on First Ave while he waited for his friends to show up for a pickup game, Wikipedia didn't mention anything about it but it could be true. In 1888 a blizzard hit the east coast, killing more than 400 people.. probably because they were snowed in and couldn't get to Katz's.. But seriously, this place was around when back when blizzards were the ninth leading cause of death! Katz's opened the same year as the Washington monument got stiff in DC and when one-legged Civil War Vets were bumming half-pence in front of the horse carriage stops.
I guess I'm getting nostalgic, but it is about more than just Katz's. Philly is a cool town with a ton of history, but its text book history... New York's history is not guarded by park rangers or hidden away behind bulletproof glass never to toll again. This city's history is on a random corner just sitting there waiting for some drunkards to stand in front of and take a silly picture at 4 in the morning without any idea of who's been in that same spot over the last 122 years.
i like this one.
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