Al Langer passed away on Sunday. Langer's Delicatessen is situated in a crummy part of Los Angeles, down near MacArthur Park. It's so crummy that Langer's closes at 4 PM every afternoon probably because even the Langer family doesn't want to hang around there after dark. But during the day, people flock to Langer's because, they say, it serves the greatest pastrami in the world. That's what they say in the L.A. Times obit for Mr. Langer, though I recall a few pieces in which the Times restaurant critics suggested that other local delis did as good or better in the pastrami department.
I'm not a pastrami kind of guy. When I've been to Langer's, I've ordered the corned beef, which was quite wonderful even though it always caused my dining companion, whoever it was, to act like I'd gone to Lawry's and not ordered the Prime Rib or gone to Peter Luger's Steak House and not asked for steak or gone to any restaurant that was famous for one thing and ordered another. Still, I had to admire Langer's for building a reputation that would cause people to go to that terrible, inconvenient location.
Mr. Langer, by the way, lived to the age of 94. Sol Forman, who owned Peter Luger's in Brooklyn, died at the age of 98 and the two men who founded the Lawry's Prime Rib empire lived similarly long lives. Maybe eating cow flesh isn't as bad for you as some say.