Langer's Deli

Langer's Delicatessen opened in June 1947, founded by Al and Jean Langer as a twelve-seat lunch counter in the Westlake neighborhood of Los Angeles, across from MacArthur Park. Al Langer had worked in delicatessens since age eleven, when he took a job as a busboy at a Newark deli to earn money for his bar mitzvah, and continued in the trade around the New York area before relocating to Los Angeles, where he worked in tailoring before opening his own restaurant after serving in World War II. The deli's signature order is the No. 19, a hot pastrami sandwich on rye, once described by the Los Angeles Times as 'the Marilyn Monroe of pastrami sandwiches.' The restaurant has grown more than tenfold from its original twelve seats and estimates it has sold over twenty million pounds of pastrami since opening. Langer's received Michelin Guide recognition in 2025, and remains at its original Alvarado Street address opposite the park more than seventy-five years after opening.