The Bay Area Is Experiencing a Pastrami Renaissance

The San Francisco Bay Area has given birth to an uncountable amount of food trends. And, now, it’s home to a carnivorous resurgence.

As an Ashkenazi Jew, eating good deli food is a spiritual experience for me. For years, the Bay Area’s relative lack of good delis was a sore spot. I love our region’s bizarre, intense food culture. But sometimes, a Jew just needs a decent pastrami sandwich.

Thankfully, the Bay Area can finally deliver that. In fact, our region is currently in the midst of a pastrami renaissance. It’s almost as thrilling as when Emily Winston, a self-described queer Berkeley Jew, beat those loud-mouthed New Yorkers as their own bagel game.

Here are three places in the Bay Area that are leading our pastrami renaissance.

Pyro’s pastrami at Delirama

When the president of your synagogue personally gives you a container of pastrami, you know it’s going to be good.

That’s how I originally discovered Pyro’s Pastrami.  Pyro’s originally started as an Oakland pop-up. For a day at a time—and at ludicrous prices—Pyros would serve up house-cured pastrami to those in the know.

Their pastrami is good. It’s got a deep, unctuous, smoky fattiness to it that you rarely see in anything here on the West Coast. Think brisket meets pork belly (except without the pork because, well, Judaism.)

Now, the people behind Pyro’s finally have a physical, permanent location from which to peddle their pastrami. Delirama is now open on Solano Ave in Berkeley, and it’s serving pastrami sandwiches, among much else.

I stopped by for a pastrami sandwich this weekend, and it’s just as good as I remember from Pyro’s pop-up days. Be prepared to wait—Delirama is popular, and my sandwich took about 45 minutes to arrive.

Wise Sons

Wise Sons deli is one of the OG Jewish food outposts in the Bay Area. Their Mission District flagship store lists the year of their founding using the Hebrew calendar, not the Gregorian one that is dominant in the West.

That’s probably confusing to passersby. But within the Jewish community, it’s a hella good sign that this place is legit.

And legit it is. Wise Sons’ menu is a bit of a “greatest hits” of Ashkenazi Jewish food. Latkes in April, oh my!

But one of their best items is their simple, delicious pastrami sandwich. The basic sandwich is just meat and a bit of yellow mustard on some rye bread. Heroically resisting the urge to use sourdough, Wise Sons keeps their pastrami sandwich authentic and delicious.

Their food is so good that they’re the official restaurant of the Contemporary Jewish Museum.

Mrs Goldfarb’s at Mendocino Farms

When I first heard about Mrs. Goldfarb’s plant-based Reuben, I nearly plotzed. A vegetarian Reuben? It felt wrong. Maybe even sacrilegious.

After trying it, though, I have to say I’m a convert. Creating plant-based pastrami makes so much sense. Pastrami is already heavily spiced, which makes us easier to cover up the mouthfeel and umami shortfalls of plant-based meat.

Throw some Mrs. Goldfarb’s plant-based pastrami on good bread, add some sauce and cheese, and put in a bit of relis–as Mendocino Farms does here in the Bay Area–and you have a healthier, lower-carbon “pastrami” sandwich that also happens to taste delicious.

The ultimate test is that my father-in-law, a New Yorker, tolerates this sandwich.

Given a choice, I’d still probably choose Pyro’s sandwich. But creating a tasty vegetarian Reuben is still quite an accomplishment.

The deli future is bright

“The world can live without peppers, but it cannot live without salt,” the 4th century Jerusalem Talmud says. Probably, ancient Jewish scholars weren’t thinking about sandwiches when they wrote that. Still, I can think of no better use for salt than to cure some delicious deli meat.

If the Bay Area’s pastrami renaissance is any indication, our deli options should keep expanding. I’m excited to try Oakland Kosher, and to pay a visit to the classic Saul’s Deli. If the Bay Area’s food entrepreneurs keep churning out new and innovative deli sandwiches, I’ll certainly keep showing up to eat them.

Thomas Smith is a food and travel writer and photographer based in Lafayette, California. 

Thomas Smith

Thomas Smith is a food and travel photographer and writer based in the San Francisco Bay Area. His photographic work routinely appears in publications including Food and Wine, Conde Nast Traveler, and the New York Times and his writing appears in IEEE Spectrum, SFGate, the Bold Italic and more. Smith holds a degree in Cognitive Science (Neuroscience) and Anthropology from the Johns Hopkins University.