Gottlieb’s Restaurant
“Full of flavor, and even had extra noodles happily floating along with the matzoh balls.”
“you can't go wrong with a sunday lunch at Gottlieb's. no crowd & nicest old jewish guys to talk too.”
“I've had my share of pastrami sandwiches in my lifetime, but a pastrami eggroll or a pastrami knish?”
Gottlieb’s Restaurant
Delivery: Yes
Take-out: Yes
Accepts Credit Cards: Yes
Wheelchair Accessible: Yes
Good for Kids: Yes
Good for Groups: Yes
Waiter Service: Yes
Caters: Yes
Price range.
$$ Price range $11-30
8 reviews
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Old school Jewish deli in the Hasidic section of Williamsburg. As a native Brooklynite and Jew I must say I was disappointed. Pastrami tastes like bologna, and anyone here who says it's the best they've ever had is seriously mistaken. I will definitely be back to try the more traditional Jewish fare, soup, kishka etc. but for now I remain unimpressed.
Just no. Run away. Fast.
This is one of the worse restaurant experiences I've had in my life. Specifically when it came to "service." And while that may have been a one-off, the food was nowhere near good enough to warrant a return.
After a daytime meeting nearby, I decided to wander through S. Williamsburg. I had read about Gottlieb's and decided to give it a shot and taste test for my corned beef-obsessed husband. So I go in.
This is food I grew up with. My maternal grandparents were of Hungarian descent so I know what the food is supposed to taste like. If you think for a second that this is your bubbe's cooking, then you may right. Only if your bubbe had a horrible case of dementia and just didn't know what the heck they were doing.
So the only thing worse than the lackluster food was the service. Oh wait. Service would apply someone actually acknowledged your existence. That didn't happen. Despite the way I was dressed (I could have easily passed for Modern Orthodox thanks to my outfit that day – a skirt just below my knees and cardigan), I wasn't acknowledged after the counter service. There was a guy floating around the room talking to everyone. But me. He brought napkins out to everyone. But me. And asked everyone if they wanted a drink. Well, everyone but me. The crowd? All men, except for a couple older ladies that were carrying a NYC book and were from Sweden. I guess my mistake was that I should have never walked in being a local without a penis.
Needless to say, I didn't even leave a penny tip. And it was well deserved!
This is one of the only good glatt kosher delis in New York (not that glatt is necessarily required halakhically). However, I would not necessarily order deli here. I've only had hot dishes, including kishka, Irish stew, shlishkes, and other dishes. I find in my experience that glatt pastrami and whatnot tend to not be of the best quality. In response to those women who have had negative experiences: Satmar is a very insular group. They don't take too warmly to outsiders. It would be best to come to such a place with a male, as men in this community are only comfortable talking to other men, usually. In response to the poster who claimed that the sandwich was meat on bread: that is the definition of a classic kosher deli sandwich! A good deli sandwich is hot, fatty, steamy meat on rye, eaten with liberal amounts of sharp mustard and alternated with bites of a refreshing garlic sour pickle.
When you walk into Gottliebs, nostalgia hits you like nothing else.
This is a ooooold kosher Hungarian style deli/restaurant where the menu didn't change for the last 60 years, and let me tell you, they better not.
if you're ever in the mood of exploring the real Chasidic culture food, then this is the place.
Right when you walk in they have a deli area where you could order for takeout all types of deli sandwiches and Bubby's style dishes.
But to experience gottliebs the real way you have to turn to your right and take a seat and there you will be greeted by Yitzchok, now yitzchok is the waiter and trademark of this place, his friendly and helpful personality adds a charm to this old rundown place and he does everything old school, from scribbling down your receipt on a old ticket book to remembering all your old silly jokes, oh and about the décor, that pretty much looks like it hasn't been updated in the last 60 years either, but when you come to gottliebs you come for the food not for the décor….
So we sit down and Yitzchok comes over and starts the usual chit chat and I mention that I used to come as a child here every Friday with my father (Story of like 15-20 years ago) and we would get the famous chulent a and Grilled kishka with gravy, and my stomach starts rumbling and begging for some good old chulent, so we order the Chulent*, Grilled Kishka**, Yaptchik*** and Pitcha**** (Some call it gala..) and under a minute Yitzchok is back with our order, including the usual bread and sour pickles (I could eat those pickled goodness all day!) and Boy oh boy was that good!!! The real good old taste of homemade chulent is simply amazing and you won't find it better at any other place! period.
So after indulging with all the delicious stuff I call up Yitzchok and tell him that I'll go for another round of Chulent (If you didn't see my profile, I'm in love with this dish…) and he said, "for over 20 years you come here for chulent, the 2nd round is on the house! and that's the service that makes us all come back here……
Looking forward for my next meal here….
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Disclaimer: I stole this stars idea from Peter D
*Chulent is a Hungarian dish somewhat similar to Chili with beef, It consist of mixture of Kidney beans, navy beans, cranberry beans and barley slow cooked for 24-48 houers with Flanken meat and marrow bones.
**Kishka is basically a dough dish made out of flour, eggs, spices and is usually cooked in the same slow cooker as the Chulent.
***Yaptchik is potato kugel (the description for that I'll leave for another time)with tidbits of beef baked overnight.
****Pitcha / Galla is not for the faint of heart, it is water cooked for like 8 hours with chicken and beef bones and then refrigerated and as a result this super fatty mixture turns into a Jello textured dish and sprinkled on top is garlic and various spices for flavor. (Tastes delicious)
This is a place where time has stood still. A total throw-back in the Hassidic section of Williamsburg.
Friendly staff with fresh, delicious kosher food.
Ask for the bean dish that is stewed for over a day. It is hearty and healthy!
We had high hopes when we walked in and felt completely out of place. Nearly everyone was Orthodox or at least male, and we were two gay guys and two women. We were on a quest for two things – a good pastrami on rye for lunch and knishes to take home to Orlando with us. We got neither.
First, we walked in and stood awkwardly at the counter, not sure if we ordered there and then it would be brought to us, ordered there and got it at the counter so we could then sit, or just sit. Eventually after trying to order at the counter, we were instructed to sit by a very soft-spoken waiter(?). He brought over a dish of coleslaw (which was amazing) and one of pickles (not my style), then we repeated the part of our order we tried to give at the counter and I attempted to order a tongue sandwich, only to find out they had none. Disappointment #1…I can get pastrami and corned beef easily in Florida, but tongue is hard to come by. I settled for the pastrami.
Sandwiches arrived, on plain white bread, even though we requested and were confirmed we'd get rye. Never had options for any cheese…I had dreams of high-piled deli sandwiches with toasted bread and I got a plain bread sandwich with a smattering of meat that was only half warm. It was tender, but had mediocre flavor. The closest thing I have to a Jewish deli near me is the TooJays Deli chain and their meat is 10x better. I paid $12 for a sandwich I could've made with better meat at my Orlando local grocery store for $6 and still had a bunch of bread and meat leftover.
We asked about knishes and no one seemed to know what we were talking about at first even though eventually I found them sitting in the front case. Eventually, we communicated that we noticed they did frozen meals packed specially for traveling home on planes or for shipping, and we wanted to know if they had frozen knishes that we could pack to bring back on the plane. The answer was no, only fresh, which was fine except the ones in the case looked nothing like what we were used to. They were round and looked like they were hollow in the middles of some.
Finished eating, we were again confused as to whether we pay at the front or got a bill, as some people were paying at the counter and others just handing their card to the waiter. After again trying to complete our transaction at the counter, we were told to just sit back down and wait. Eventually we got out check, paid, and left.
At no point were we given menus, and I later saw there were tons of options aside from sandwiches that I could've gotten (I missed out on matzoh ball soup!). I have no complaints that we were the odd table out, but it was apparent they didn't care to help us out much to enjoy our experience because they had enough (what I assume were) regulars to care about.
The rest of the food may be amazing, I'll never know. I should've gone with my gut instinct when I passed by this listing several Yelp searches earlier when looking for Jewish Delis and knishes. I was trying to go by proximity to where we were, and I learned my lesson that for quality and better service, I need to travel a bit farther to places with better ratings.
I lived in this area for several years but never felt comfortable enough to walk inside Gottlieb's. The local Hasidim had long made it clear that us newbies in the area were persona non grata for the most part, so I didn't think eating in one of their prized local restaurants would be received well. A few of my friends who did dare to go all said they felt uncomfortable and put off by the unfriendly service.
Well, I'm about as opposite as you can get from a Hasidic Jew, so I expected the worst when I finally got the balls to walk in and have lunch back in May. I was so pleasantly surprised when I was jovially approached by this big, old Jewish guy who looked like he was right off the set of Fiddler on the Roof. He didn't come over to make any real small talk, but he made me feel welcome, told me to take my time, and suggested trying lots of things on the menu.
And why shouldn't I have felt welcome? While there was certainly no shortage of Hasidic men having lunch around me, chowing down one table over from me was a big, black, New York City fireman sitting two tables over from me. And Hipsters. And all sorts of random people. The only thing absent from the scene was women, and that may actually be by design knowing how this part of town operates.
Anyway, I wasn't here for the company. I was here for the food. And Gottlieb's did not disappoint. I took the suggestion of another Yelp reviewer and asked for a grilled pastrami with fried onions and russian dressing on rye. While I wouldn't compare it to the gold standard of Katz Delicatessen, it was definitely the next best thing. Everything from the bread to the pastrami to the fried onions was so melt-in-your-mouth delicious that you could have eaten this sandwich even if you didn't have any teeth. I absolutely loved it. Oh, and did I mention the pickles? I must have eaten a few hundred of them.
Ironically, I dined with a colleague of mine who happens to be a Sephardic Orthodox Jew. He ended up being the more uncomfortable one out of the two of us. That I don't understand, nor do I care to understand. I'm a recovering Catholic and have enough problems to deal with.
4 stars for the pastrami on rye and good service. That's all that matters.
I'd been wanting to try this place for a while. I got the pastrami sandwich and the helpings of meat were pretty good, but the bread was uninspired. At $12, it's far from a good deal. The place looks a bit unclean. The health department sign in the window says "grade pending". The place has been open since 1962. How long can a grade be pending?