This Old-School Texas Deli Is Known for Sky-High Pastrami and Classic Deli Soul

Here is a hill I will die on: a real pastrami sandwich should be almost inconvenient to eat. If you can close your jaw around it on the first try, someone got lazy at the slicer. The good ones lean, they topple, they make you commit.

Texas is barbecue country, and I love it for that. But every so often a craving shows up that smoked brisket cannot answer. It wants cured beef, a swipe of sharp mustard, and rye bread with real character.

For years I assumed that feeling meant booking a flight to New York. It does not. Tucked into Houston’s Uptown, one deli has been curing its own meats and stacking them toward the ceiling since the last century.

This is old-world deli done without a single shortcut, and the pastrami is why people cross the whole city for lunch. The place is Kenny & Ziggy’s New York Delicatessen.

Below, I will walk you through the pastrami, the menu that reads like a novel, the Michelin-trained family behind it, and how to plan your own visit.

A Pastrami That Takes Six Weeks to Say Hello

Start with the thing that built the reputation. The pastrami here is cured in house, and it is not a weekend project. Each plate of beef sits in a salt-and-sugar brine for around 45 days before anyone thinks about smoke.

Then it gets rolled in cracked black pepper and juniper, the spices that give pastrami its dark, fragrant crust. Ziggy Gruber, the chef and co-owner, calls it triple-smoked. His words on the goal are refreshingly blunt: “We really want to intensify the flavors.”

The cut matters too. This pastrami comes from the plate, the rich section of beef right next to the brisket, which is why every slice carries that soft line of fat. Lean pastrami is a sad thing. This is emphatically not that.

One more detail I love. The seeded rye does not just get toasted. It goes into a 500-degree oven so the crust caramelizes and turns crisp. Warm, crackly bread against warm, peppery beef, and that contrast is the entire point.

Houston Press once ranked the triple-smoked pastrami on rye among its favorite dishes in the whole city. Order one and the ranking makes sense. This is the benchmark other Texas pastrami quietly gets measured against.

The Sandwich Named After a Musical

The signature order has one of the best names in Texas food: “The Fiddler on the Roof of Your Mouth.” It is a triple-decker that piles both corned beef and that house pastrami together, with coleslaw and Russian dressing between slices of seeded rye.

It is a lot of sandwich. That is the joke and the point. You order it knowing you are getting a monument, and you either finish it or you take half home and think about it all afternoon.

If you want the pastrami to stand on its own, you can get it that way too, piled high and unapologetic. Purists take it on rye with a smear of mustard and nothing in the way. I am a purist about roughly three things, and this is one of them.

Then there is the Reuben, built the New York way with grilled corned beef, melted Swiss, hot sauerkraut, and Russian dressing. My advice for a first visit is simple. Bring a friend, order two different sandwiches, and trade halves.

It really is the only sane way to sample a counter like this one. One person, one sandwich, and you will leave having tasted a single corner of a very large world.

The corned beef deserves its own mention, cured in house right alongside the pastrami and every bit as tender. Stack it on a warm potato knish and you have a meal that argues, convincingly, that carbs are a personality trait.

And do not overlook the tongue, the brisket, and the turkey for anyone at the table who wants to go a little gentler. Every meat that leaves this kitchen was cured or roasted on site, which is rarer than it should be.

Not Just a Pastrami Shop

Here is where Kenny & Ziggy’s separates itself from a good sandwich spot. Ziggy calls it “the most complete New York-style menu there is,” and he is not exaggerating for effect. The thing genuinely runs long enough to double as light reading while you wait.

Order the matzo ball soup and you get a bowl with a fluffy, cloud-soft dumpling the size of your fist. There are hand-rolled blintzes, crispy potato latkes, and Hungarian stuffed cabbage that tastes like somebody’s grandmother is still in the kitchen.

The chopped liver is the real, old-school kind. The pickles are crunchy and cured in house. The smoked fish is sliced by hand, and a proper lox-and-bagel plate lands looking like a small still-life painting.

Breakfast is a genuine event here, with bountiful plates built for a hungry film crew. And do not walk past the bakery case on your way out. It is stacked with butter cookies, rainbow cookies, black-and-white cookies, and pastries made in the same kitchen.

Pro tip: get an egg cream from the soda fountain, that classic New York mix of milk, seltzer, and chocolate syrup with no egg and no cream in it. Explaining the name to a first-timer is half the fun.

From a Michelin Kitchen to a Deli Counter

Here is the detail that surprises people. The man curing this pastrami is a formally trained fine-dining chef. Ziggy Gruber enrolled at Le Cordon Bleu in London at just 15 years old and graduated at the top of his class.

From there he cooked in some of the most serious kitchens in Europe, including the Michelin three-star Le Gavroche and The Waterside Inn. He had every door in fine dining open to him.

And he chose pastrami. He went back to the food he grew up on, the deli classics his family had been making for generations, and decided that was the tradition worth protecting. I find that choice genuinely moving.

It also explains why the food tastes the way it does. The technique behind that 45-day cure and the caramelized rye is not folksy guesswork. It is a trained chef applying real discipline to humble, glorious food.

Three Generations Deep

The soul of this place is a family story. Ziggy is a third-generation deli man, and he grew up in the trade the way some kids grow up on a farm. His grandfather Max came to New York from Budapest, Hungary, in the early 1900s.

Max opened the Rialto Deli, remembered as one of the first delicatessens on Broadway. Many dishes on the Kenny & Ziggy’s menu today are the exact recipes Max created or carried over from the old country and served at the Rialto.

The origin scene is one Ziggy tells often. When he was around eight, his grandfather threw an apron at him and said, “come with me.” That was the entire job interview. He stepped behind the counter younger than his father or grandfather ever had.

Kenny & Ziggy’s opened its Houston doors in 1999. Gruber came to town at the invitation of a partner who wanted true New York deli food in Texas, and the “Kenny” in the name honors that partnership. The bet paid off.

The Deli That Got Its Own Movie

Did you know the Jewish deli is a genuinely endangered institution? Gruber has spoken about how many old deli families steered their kids toward becoming doctors and lawyers, and the delis quietly closed one by one.

He decided to be the exception and keep the tradition alive, and that mission is why filmmakers came calling. Gruber was the central figure in “Deli Man,” a documentary that traced the history and the fragile survival of the American Jewish delicatessen.

On camera and in person, he is a charming, funny guide to a vanishing world. Watch it before you go and you will taste the sandwich a little differently, knowing how much history is stacked between the bread.

Broadway on Post Oak

In early 2022, Kenny & Ziggy’s moved into a bigger home nearby, taking over a former Luby’s on Post Oak Boulevard and reopening with a theater-loving, Broadway theme. Gruber described settling in as slipping on an old pair of slippers.

The upgrade brought room to breathe: more seating, a full bar, and a proper soda fountain for those egg creams. The walls lean into showbiz, which fits a deli whose signature sandwich is named after a Broadway musical.

The energy is exactly the old-school deli feeling the reputation promises. Big booths, a busy counter, glass cases of cured meats and cakes, and the comfortable hum of a room where regulars and first-timers eat the same enormous sandwiches side by side.

This is a place built for lingering. Come hungry, come curious, and give yourself time to actually read the menu instead of ordering the first thing that sounds good, because the second thing probably sounds better.

What to Know Before You Go

Kenny & Ziggy’s is open seven days a week, generally from morning through evening, so it works for breakfast, a long lunch, or an early dinner. Weekends and holidays get busy, which is exactly what you want from a deli.

Sandwiches here are famously large, so the smart move is to under-order and share. If your eyes are bigger than your stomach, the counter is happy to box up the rest. Cold pastrami on rye is a very good next-day breakfast.

Can’t make it to Houston? The deli ships its pastrami and sandwich kits nationwide through Goldbelly, so a piece of this counter can land on your doorstep. It is not the same as sitting in the booth, but it is a real fix in a pinch.

How to Get There

Where: Kenny & Ziggy’s New York Delicatessen, 1743 Post Oak Blvd, Houston, TX 77056. It sits in the Uptown and Galleria area, an easy stop whether you are shopping nearby or making the drive purely for the sandwich.

Call ahead on a busy day, and if you are bringing a crowd, the deli caters and handles large orders too. Parking is straightforward for a spot this central, one more small mercy of the newer, roomier location.

Go Get the Sandwich

Texas will always have my heart for barbecue, but a proper pastrami on caramelized rye is its own kind of magic, and you do not have to leave the state to find it. Kenny & Ziggy’s has been perfecting it for a quarter of a century.

So round up someone who appreciates a serious sandwich, point the car toward Post Oak, and order more than you think you can finish. Take the leftovers home, and try not to eat them in the parking lot before you pull away.

Featured image: @ Kenny & Ziggy’s New York Delicatessen