Pastrami specialist Five High Market closes in Huntington

Pastrami giveth and it taketh away. Since late 2023, aficionados of the iconic deli meat have been making pilgrimages to Five High Market in Huntington to sample the smoky, succulent thick-cut pastrami. But the modest Huntington shop is closed, a victim of its own success.

"I didn’t anticipate how popular we would be," owner Ben Zelouf said. "The kitchen was just too small to handle the demand."

Five High’s kitchen sufficed for the convenience store, Crossroads Market, that used to occupy the location, but it was inadequate for Zelouf. "We didn’t have either a gas stove or a fryer," he said. "And I need more space to properly prepare and hold the pastrami. I sell out so often and it is a major inconvenience. Several times per week I had people coming from an hour away just to find out there is none to serve."

Zelouf took over Crossroads on a dare. Last year, he told Newsday that he’d been hanging out at nearby Besito Mexican restaurant and made an offhand, disparaging remark to a buddy about the shop’s appearance. Crossroads’ owner happened to overhear and called Zelouf’s bluff: Did he think he could do a better job? If so, the store was his.

Soon after Zelouf took over the lease, a family friend offered to supply him with pastrami. The friend, whose name Zelouf never revealed, used a century-old recipe, brining and smoking the beef navels at an undisclosed Long Island location. Smokier than your average deli pastrami, this one was also so tender that it had to be hand sliced. Piled between two slices of insufficiently sturdy rye bread, it was a sandwich that was, at once, impossible to eat and impossible to stop eating.

Zelouf said that new tenants would be taking over the Huntington location, but that his own pastrami journey is just beginning. "Right now, I’m looking for a new location on Long Island where we can do a proper, kosher-style deli. It will be better for me, and better for the pastrami."