Milton Parker, Pastrami King of the Carnegie Deli, Dies

Serious Eats

Milton Parker was born on January 10, 1919, and opened his first restaurant—a coffee shop in the newly minted Long Island suburb Levittown—when he was 28. Soon after Parker opened the Carnegie Deli with partner Leo Steiner, who died in 1988 at the age of 48. The Carnegie Deli was a legendary hangout for show business figures, politicians, and corned beef lovers. According to Steiner’s Times obituary, for the United States bicentennial celebration in 1976, the Deli prepared “a 60-pound ''Statue of Liverty'' from chopped liver—complete with a turkey wing torch."

At a ribbon-cutting at the short-lived Carnegie Deli opening in Los Angeles, “Carol Channing plopped a giant Styrofoam matzoh ball into a gargantuan bowl of chicken soup.” Part of Woody Allen’s Broadway Danny Rose was filmed inside the original Carnegie. And early last month, Mayor Bloomberg offered giant Carnegie Deli cheesecakes as token peace offering in the event of a Philadelphia Eagles win. The Eagles, of course, won.

"Pastrami has its own ordering nickname," Parker wrote in his 2005 memoir, "a pistol." At the Carnegie Deli, you will hear the servers calling out, "A pistol on whiskey down," (rye bread toasted) or "A pistol dressed" (Russian dressing and coleslaw on the bread).

"The reason is not because pastrami is the king of sandwiches and merits its own special name," wrote Parker, but to avoid any confusion between pastrami and salami, whose endings sound alike. Mr. Parker showed New York that pastrami is the king of sandwiches by any name.