By what alchemical process do things in the United States become frozen at specific temporal junctions? Who, for example, decided that diners up and down the country should remain locked somewhere in the nineteen-fifties? The luncheonette, a subspecies of diner, harkens back to the interwar period, to Dos Passos’s “Manhattan Transfer” and men scarfing meaty sandwiches and pickles before loping off into the growing metropolis to find honest work. Several originals from this era remain; the best of them is probably the Lexington Candy Shop, which dates from 1925 and serves thick hamburgers and hot tuna melts to Upper East Siders in a hurry.
The newest opened several weeks ago, and already has a legion of regulars—or, at least, it thinks it does. “You’re getting the Ida, right?” asked one of the cheeky servers at Harry & Ida’s Luncheonette, which sits snugly in the southeastern corner of Tribeca. When the bewildered customer said that, no, he had not yet made up his mind, the server replied that she must have mistaken him for someone else. As recompense, she offered him a half slice of pastrami, steaming, with a speckled dollop of mustard, on a piece of parchment paper.
Harry & Ida’s mother ship is a throwback smokehouse and grocery in Alphabet City, which opened in 2015. They’re both named after the founders’ great-grandparents—the proprietors of a now defunct Harlem deli—who came to this country from Hungary in the early twentieth century. The pastrami, heftily cut and intricately marbled, is something of a specialty, and is utterly delicious. It’s coated in a pepper-heavy rub and smoked, then served at the luncheonette in sandwiches topped with buttermilk-fermented cucumber kraut and cracked rye berries, or as a “deluxe” protein that can be added to a lunch plate for an extra four dollars.
Pastrami aside, this is trendified luncheonette fare. (Smoked apricot chicken, anyone?) The sandwiches are all tasty. A vegetarian chopped liver, made with mushrooms and walnuts, spread with lemon-poppy marmalade, and seasoned with a sliced beet-pickled egg, manages freshness and heartiness at once. The lunch-plate options contain a dud or two—the hot-smoked maple salmon is frigid and disappointing. The décor reflects the establishment’s clash of contemporary and iconic. Patrons sit at small, stylish marble tables under bright floral wallpaper, instead of along a counter. But, should you get too cozy, the air-conditioning is set to frostbite o’clock, reminding you that, like the luncheonette-goers of yore, you must soon be back at work. (Plates and sandwiches, $9.50 to $17.45.) ♦
