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The Most Surprising Pastrami in New York
Photo: San Wei
I am always happy to take credit for discovering a new restaurant through hard-won reporting methods like canvassing a neighborhood in bad weather, scanning social media for hours, and starting impromptu conversations with a lot of strangers. But sometimes, a great spot just gets handed to me, as was the case with San Wei, which I learned about when a friend texted me a photo of a food-court Chinese stall advertising — between a plate of garnished dumplings and Coca-Cola chicken on rice — a copiously heaped oblong sandwich, under which was written “best pastrami in town.”
Given the incongruity of the people making it, this claim required immediate scrutiny. I convinced some friends to drive me over in exchange for pastrami and Chinese food. One of them assumed we were headed to a Chinese “mall,” à la New World in Flushing, a fair conclusion based on my description and how many times we have done that in the past. But San Wei is located at Queens Center in Elmhurst, which is as close to a stereotypical suburban mall as you can get without taking a ferry. There’s a JCPenney, an Aldo, and, at the bottom of the escalator, past the conveyor-belt sushi, a true American food court anchored by a Chipotle, a Chick-fil-A, and a KFC. In their company lies the independently owned Burmese Bites and, as of two months ago, San Wei.
On a recent Saturday afternoon, the floor was swarmed with people in seats and waiting in long lines in front of the cheesesteaks and fried chicken. At San Wei, things were quieter and an available employee offered to help us make our selection. Pastrami on rye was a given, but the rest of the menu required more consideration. I didn’t even know about the ramen, for instance. After much deliberation, I ordered — in addition to the half-pound sandwich — the San Wei noodles, Chongqing noodles, Coca-Cola chicken, and some pastrami bao.
When I started asking questions about the origin of the pastrami fusion menu, the cashier directed me to a man working on the line who turned out to be the owner. While he forked a brisket out of one of the steam trays and deposited it on the cutting board, he told me they don’t actually make it from scratch, revealing only that it comes from “a third party.” When I asked why a Chinese restaurant would open with pastrami as one of its core proteins (it’s also served cut into cubes on rice), he replied, “I don’t really think of this as a Chinese restaurant,” pointing to the pictures of ramen and saying he added additional cuisines because he felt he could do them justice. “I just like to cook what is good.” As he cut dark-barked slices with a smooth sawing motion, another chef was expertly slapping and stretching noodles on the table behind.
Once the food landed, the pastrami did something I might have thought impossible: It overshadowed multiple bowls of noodles. The rye bread was soft, barely toasted, squirted with spicy brown mustard, while the portion of thickly sliced meat was enough to weigh it down in the center. It had the salty, peppery kick you’d expect but was leaner — and thus less tender — than the melting sample slices Katz’s cutters hand out while preparing sandwiches. I want to tell you this was the best pastrami I’ve ever eaten, but I can’t. “It’s as good as what they serve at the Mets’ stadium,” my friend said accurately.
But both bowls of noodles were excellent: The thick, flat hand-pulled San Wei noodles were tangled with egg and fatty pork in a numbing tomato broth. The thin noodles were another hit, spicy and peppery broth with a slick of red oil and nothing else.
The biggest surprise of the day was the pastrami bao, cubed meat in steamed buns with a squiggle of mustard and chile crisp on top. They were outstanding: zingy mustard and assertive chile oil balanced by the soft, sweet mitten of white bread holding everything together. The buns were just the right size for anyone who wants a taste of pastrami without committing to a full, nap-inducing sandwich.
The owner, who was happy to chat at the shop but didn’t return any of my follow-up messages, has further ambitions for San Wei. He told me during our talk that he has been developing a churro recipe and wants to add shrimp Alfredo to his menu next. I suggested he try making it with his shop’s hand-pulled noodles, and he nodded in agreement.
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