Anytime I’m alerted that a favorite restaurant may close, I panic.  Such is the case with Langer’s Delicatessen in Los Angeles at Seventh and Alvarado. 

Langer’s has the best tasting pastrami of all the remaining Jewish delicatessens in the Los Angeles area (and there aren’t many left).  Too bad it has the worst location.

It has been around for 77 years.  Norm Langer, the son of Al who built the business, has been around for 79 years.  For decades the area around MacArthur Park has been unsafe, but in more recent years even more so with open drug use on the surrounding streets.

Norm has been after City Hall to do something to clean up the neighborhood; otherwise, he may have to close the restaurant.  But it was L.A. Times columnist Steve Lopez who wrote a story about it, which then went viral on local TV newscasts, to attract sufficient attention.

I had to go to Langer’s immediately before anything happened to the restaurant . . . or to Norm.

When I entered Langer’s yesterday, there standing near the counter was Norm himself.  I walked up to him, shook his hand and asked him if the City had responded to the swell of media coverage the past few days. 

“Yesterday, I met with the Mayor for an hour,” he said, somewhat confident that action may finally be taken.  I also inquired if there were any Langer offspring who could continue . . ., but before I could finish my question, he interrupted demonstratively, “No, I’m it,” clearly a question he is tired of answering.

Lopez wrote a follow-up about Mayor Karen Bass’s meeting with Norm at Langer’s.  One thing each discovered about the other:  they both attended the same junior and senior high schools.  Bass promised to turn things around (hopefully before the 2028 Olympics).

The possibility of losing Langer’s would put another nail into the Jewish Deli coffin.  The documentary “Deli Man” (2014) deftly explains why delicatessens are on the restaurant endangered list:  people’s diets have changed, and deli meats are more expensive than a fast food lunch.

Besides Langers, Brent’s in Northridge and Westlake Village, Art’s in Studio City and Nate ’n’ Al’s in Beverly Hills are the remaining deli’s in the L.A. area that are still good.

After eating my pastrami on rye with cole slaw and pickles followed by a chocolate egg cream, I was pleasantly surprised at the long line of customers on Seventh Street at 12:45 waiting for a table.

Now, if we could only clone Norm so that a Langer can continue the deli for another 77 years.