Hot Pastrami Sandwich

It’s been dozens of years since I’ve had a good, juicy, hot pastrami sandwich. I tried the Subway one last night, but it misses the mark by a mile.

A couple of years ago, I did a search here in Hawaii, trying a couple of places with absolutely no luck at all. People here think that all that’s involved in making a hot pastrami sandwich is to slice up pastrami, nuke it in the microwave oven, and put it between two slices of bread.

No sir. That’s not it. I didn’t find any that I liked. I even tried making my own, but that didn’t work out too good either.

The best hot pastrami sandwich I ever had was in Alhambra, California, in the very early ‘70s before the wife, my #1 son and I returned to Honolulu.

There was this little sandwich stand on Atlantic Boulevard (I can’t remember the name of the cross street, but it may have been Mission Road or Commonwealth Avenue) that made great hot pastrami sandwiches.

The pastrami slices were floating in a pan of juices. They cut a French bun in half, slathered one side with mustard and the other with mayo, and heaped piles of the wet, steaming pastrami into the bun. Then, they did something I’ll never forget … they dunked the whole sandwich into the juice.

The wet (but not entirely soggy) monster was then wrapped in sandwich paper and handed over the counter, with the owner pointing out a small pan of hot peppers to garnish if you wanted to.

When the wife and I visited the area a few years ago, I made it a point to find the stand. It wasn’t there. I could have cried. Nobody, but nobody, makes hot pastrami sandwiches like they did.