I had a major craving for pastrami recently. One of the best places to eat in Santa Barbara was Norton Pastrami. One of the most popular sandwich shops in town, Norton’s obviously specialized in that wonderful salty meat. Usually they just served it on a squishy roll after dipping it in au jus. It was perfect and I wanted that.
However, only Norton’s really made that kind of sandwich with pastrami. So it was up to me to see if I could find a good source of pastrami even if I couldn’t find that specific sandwich. A quick google search turned up the most popular spot, a food cart (of course) called Pastrami Zombie.
It was across town from where I live, but luckily I was driving through on my way back from a hike so it worked out to stop there. It’s part of a large food cart pod located near a popular bar in the area. You can get drinks at the bar, use their restrooms if you need, and warm up inside if you want. Also any and all of the food carts looked great and have good reviews. I just had a specific craving.
Once there, they didn’t have the same style of sandwich I was looking for. But that was fine, I just wanted pastrami on anything. They had the traditional pastrami on rye, but instead I opted for Da-Burg, a hamburger with a generous amount of pastrami on top.
I sat down and warmed up as best I could. It’s getting to be very cold out. It didn’t take long for my sandwich to show up and I wasn’t disappointed. It had full, rich pastrami flavor complimented by the burger and toppings. It just came with a bag of chips, I would’ve preferred french fries but they were still tasty.
All in all I liked it and will definitely go back to try out their more traditional offerings. They also have a brick and mortar location somewhere that I want to try.
