Robert Sietsema: I?ve always revered the kosher Second Avenue Deli for its hot corned beef, even as they?ve migrated northward, but non-kosher Katz?s remains the king of hot pastrami. Still sliced by hand, the scarlet, pepper-rubbed meat settles thickly on the rye bread like a sunburned bathing beauty onto a hot beach.

Sarah DiGregorio: Katz?s is the one to beat, but I?m partial to the product at Mill Basin Deli, where the pastrami is perfectly ribboned with fat and blackened around the edges with coarse pepper. The purplish meat teeters so vertiginously between the slices of rye that to eat it, you must attack with abandon.