We’ll address Texas in a moment, but let’s first take a look at what has long been the standard line in food histories on pastrami’s roots in America. Most accounts point to one of two establishments as the first to sell pastrami in the United States.
But both of these origin stories have a few chronological problems. Katz’s Deli has long dated its founding to 1888, the year when two immigrant brothers, Morris and Hyman Iceland, supposedly opened a Lower East Side delicatessen called Iceland Brothers. It is said to have become “Iceland & Katz” when Willy Katz bought into the firm in 1903, and then just “Katz’s Delicatessen” in 1910. But city directories and immigration records show that the Icelands didn’t actually arrive in the United States until 1902, and Hyman Iceland didn’t open his original delicatessen on East Houston Street until 1911. (You can read a more detailed chronology of Katz’s Delicatessen on my website.)
