New York’s Famed Katz’s Deli Wants to Mail You Pastrami in Canada

Iconic New York City restaurant Katz’s Delicatessen is launching an international delivery service, promising pastrami, matzo ball soup, corned beef, latkes, and more direct to your door.

The 130-year-old deli is offering to package up much of its menu for delivery, from classic meats to a full three-course dinner option — owner Jake Dell tells Eater that the family-run business spent a long time planning to ensure that deliveries can cross the border smoothly.

“It goes through a single point of entry...we’ve spent the last year and a half working with customs to figure out how to do this. It’s involved a whole bunch of logistics and dealing with customs patrols and different corporations.”

The products offered aren’t mass-produced, but rather, cured, smoked, or prepared at Katz’s in New York’s Lower East Side before being sent for packaging.

Of course, given that Montreal has its own set of historic Jewish delis smoking meat and frying latkes, it does seem that this delivery service could hold more interest for people elsewhere in Quebec and Canada.

“There’s definitely a demand [in Canada]...from people who’ve come to New York before and they miss that taste and you can’t get great pastrami in a lot of other places in the country,” says Dell.

But there could be interest on the part of major smoked, cured meat connoisseurs — Dell says he’s eaten at places like Schwartz’s and that Katz’s and Schwartz’s are “opposite sides of the same coin”, using similar techniques introduced by Jewish immigrants decades ago.

For the record, it doesn’t seem like the Montreal and New York meat-smoking scenes have the same rivalry as their bagel counterparts — Dell doesn’t declare one to be better than another, but notes that there are subtle differences, for example, from different woods used in the smoking, to different spice ratios (Katz’s is slightly more peppery).

Any order should be delivered within two days, including to more distant customers in places like British Columbia.

• All Katz’s Delicatessen coverage [ENY]