Saul’s Restaurant and Deli in Berkeley has stopped serving pastrami, at least for the time being.
“It’s only for three weeks,” Saul’s co-owner Peter Levitt said last week, when pastrami sandwiches were yanked from the restaurant’s menu for the first time in its 25-year history.
According to a letter to the public signed by Levitt, co-owner Karen Adelman, general manager Tacy Traverso and manager Lauren Woods, Saul’s recently was informed by its meat supplier, Niman Ranch, “that they no longer wanted to guarantee a supply of meat for pastrami.”
Levitt said Niman Ranch, which hasn’t been under the direction of founder Bill Niman for 31⁄2 years, has moved its operation from Marin to Nebraska and changed some of its procedures.
The letter continued: “This week it was established that they [Niman Ranch] have cut off the supply altogether. At this moment, the supply of this cut of beef (with no antibiotics or hormones) cannot be arranged.”
Several days after that letter was issued, Levitt said he had located two or three new suppliers, and that the forequarter cuts needed to make pastrami were to be shipped to Saul’s this week for curing and then smoking. The meat should be ready to be served by the second or third week in June, Levitt said.
“When the pastrami comes back, it will be hand rubbed with our spice mix, and wood smoked here at Saul’s,” the letter said. “The supplies might be intermittent at first, but we will hopefully build to a full and continuous supply in months to come.”
At least initially, Levitt said, there hadn’t been too much customer kvetching, along the lines of: “What!? You don’t have pastrami?!”
“There’s been a little of that,” Levitt said. “I think people are OK with this for a week or two. They can expand their sandwich horizons, maybe try the corned beef or something else. But if this lasted more than a few weeks, then we would really hear it.”
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