WARNING: If you have a fear of too much fat in your diet, I highly recommend you read no further. You may be led, recklessly, astray.

Pastrami. What can I say? Perhaps the most wonderful thing that mankind has ever done to meat. And all mostly an accident.

Pastrami originally had little to do with tenderness and taste. The reason beef was brined and smoked was to preserve it. Make it last for weeks, long before the word Frigidaire entered the Mexispanish dictionary. And the chest of the cow wasn’t the chosen cut because it was the toughest, it was simply because it was the cheapest.

I saw that get-me-all-in-a-tizzy word pastrami recently in a social media post. It was way at the bottom of this new guy in San Miguel’s hype for his delivered-from-home meals. I looked at the price of his smoked meat. $1000 a kilo. A bit rich I thought and passed.

And then I thought about it again. The price of the pastrami wasn’t the main reason I’d passed. It was because of a foodie named Lou Campese. Lou is one of my very best friends. But Lou is also the guy in this town who makes the pastrami for Don Lupe’s extraordinarily good reuben sandwich. Ordering this new guy’s pastrami would be almost as bad as cheating on Don Day’s Wife. But Lou, the Pastrami Swami, was in Australia for a few weeks; he might never know.

I ordered half a kilo.

This new guy in town’s name is Tommy Delano and it was he who personally arrived at my door on Thursday night with the pastrami. I liked that he did his own deliveries. When people ask my advice about which restaurant to go to, top of my list is never go to a restaurant where the owner isn’t in attendance.

Tommy Delano, a guy looking very north-of-the-border in his tee, shorts and bass-ackwards baseball cap told me to “get the very best from my pastrami put the vacuum sealed pack in boiling water for ten minutes”. The next day I did.

My plan was a sandwich (the almost only way to eat pastrami) with some French’s mustard and, as I had yet to pick up the cucumbers from Chinaberry for Don Day’s Wife’s new dills, some jarred pepinillos.

I knew I was in for something special when the meat fell apart trying to remove it from the plastic pouch. The aroma brought memories of Mordecai Richler, in his book “Barney’s Version”, calling the smell of smoked meat the “Essence of Judea”. The taste was exquisite. No overpowering brine or smoke. Just moist and tender beef taken to a new level. I had one foot in each smoked meat capital, Montreal and New York. My tastebuds were in heaven.

I couldn’t wait to share my joy over my half-pounder (quantity is almost as important as quality in the deli tradition) with Don Day’s Wife. I unglued myself from the TV and headed to the kitchen.

“Couldn’t eat it. Far to fatty. Picked out the leanest bits. Saved the rest for you.” 

I was gobsmacked. Don Day’s Wife knows the importance of fat to flavor. She always chooses a ribeye. She always makes her burgers with a 75/25 lean to fat ratio. Same with the pork in her Italian sausage. This is the woman that likes her lamb chops unfrenched. And Tommy Delano’s pastrami was too fatty for her?

“You and a few others are going to love it. But not many others. There’s a reason Shopsy’s would ask if you wanted lean, medium or fat.”

I pouted. And decided to give Tommy Delano a shout to congratulate him on his creation and see if he’d share some secrets. But first I wanted to know about him. Didn’t he know you’re supposed to be at least 50 before you make the move to San Miguel de Allende.

He told me, “I was born and raised in Mexico City where I lived for about ten years and then moved to Queretaro where I studied until tenth grade. Circumstances led us to move to Canada, where I got a chance to discover the other side of my lineage. See my mother is Canadian, from Montreal to be more specific, and my father’s from Mexico City.”

“I spent a total of 18 years living in Canada, studying Culinary Arts and then moving from restaurant to restaurant. I get easily bored so I need new projects to keep me interested. I have spent the last 13 years working in the culinary industry and moving all the way from Vancouver to Montreal, working in Calgary and Toronto as well as the Rockies in ski resorts like Panorama and Fairmont Chateau Lake Louise.”

“I guess to answer your question, circumstance brought me to San Miguel. Covid happened…I was living in Montreal, living a dream that had been promised but not fulfilled. My parents were bored in an apartment in CDMX and had discovered San Miguel as a haven to having a social life whilst in the midst of a pandemic. Having lived in Queretaro before, San Miguel seemed like a great place since a lot of my Mexican social life is only 45 minutes away.”

I quickly knew a lot about Tommy Delano. But I still didn’t know a lot about his very fatty and very good pastrami.

He told me he uses the entire brisket not just the flat; he brines it for ten days; he includes salt, cinnamon, clove, ginger, bay leaf, allspice, black pepper, coriander seed, mustard seed and the sometimes controversial sugar in his brine; he both cold and hot smokes the meat; and…the one gem of info that I think may be what lifts his pastrami above the others.

“The beef is a wagyu cross mix with angus, grown in Ezequiel Montes in Querétaro with a mixed diet of both pasture and grain.”

The key word in that sentence is that word “wagyu”. Wagyu is a very protected Japanese breed of cows that produce the world’s tastiest (and fattiest) meat.

Tommy Delano emailed me a photo of his pastrami that I think tells the story better than any words I could choose.

That email started with the words “fat = flavour for me” and I couldn’t agree more. I’ve seen wagyu steaks priced at over $100 (not MX but US) a pound so Tommy Delano’s fatty pastrami may be pricey but, perhaps, not so overpriced.

Anyway, for me, it’s worth it and I’ll be ordering more. In fact I may even have Don Day’s Wife backing me on the buy.

“I was thinking of that pastrami, thinking of it in a hash, thinking of the potatoes and onions frying in that fat. That might be amazing.”

Think I’ll make it a kilo this time.

Pastrami is one of the fixtures on Tommy Delano’s  extensive weekly menu. If you would like to be included on the distribution list, you can email him at tommydelano31@gmail.com.