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David’s Brisket House
533 Nostrand Avenue (between Atlantic Avenue and Herkimer Street), Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn; (718) 789-1155.
“Pastrami, baby!” whooped a dreadlocked diner recently at David’s Brisket House. “As salaam alaikum, pastrami!”
This Bedford-Stuyvesant institution inspires vocal exuberance, the subtext of which seems to be: Thank goodness for Brooklyn, where Yemeni Muslim guys serve exemplary Jewish deli sandwiches to a predominantly African-American crowd.
The cultural mashup of David’s only adds to the charm of its pastrami. Such personality! So hot and sweet and sassy. It’s irresistible piled on rye with spicy brown mustard, or even with mayonnaise, as some here prefer (all beef sandwiches are $6 for small, $9 for medium, $12 for large). Layers of ruddy, tender slices hide streaks of fat, to be mined like unctuous gold as you eat.
The pastrami’s shtick upstages all else. If you must have morning eggs (David’s opens at 7 a.m.), the wonderfully nonkosher breakfast sandwich includes them with gooey American cheese and pastrami, but you’ll hardly notice them, the meat is so mesmerizing.
David’s brisket is the dark, handsome, silent type; it lures you in with its deep, warm manner. Moist and mightily beefy, seasoned simply and cooked low and slow, it offers just the right amount of chew. It lends gravitas to a combo sandwich with the pastrami ($15). But no one really needs a duet this outsize; get the brisket solo on a roll with luscious gravy on the side, and savor its swarthy torch-song flavor.
The lean, slightly musky corned beef is David’s wallflower. But morning is its time to shine. Griddle-fried to coax forth its flavor and paired with soft diced potatoes in a beautiful hash, it earns its bona fides ($6.50).
When the decades-old David’s, whose current owners have had it for four years, was shuttered last October, deli lovers were crestfallen. But the hiatus, for low-key renovations, was blessedly short-lived. To quote that dreadlocked client at the counter, “Pastrami! Alhamdulillah!”
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