Former Dishwasher Offers $10M for Carnegie Deli, Owner Says No Way
Carnegie Deli will serve its last mile-high pastrami sandwich today at midnight, despite a late offer from a former dishwasher to buy the restaurant for $10 million.
Upper West Side restaurateur Sammy Musovic washed dishes for a year at the deli in the 1970s. He said he offered the money to save a landmark “that is as much a part of New York City as the Statue of Liberty and the Empire State Building.”
But the proposal fell on deaf ears.
“Carnegie Deli is not for sale and the family is certainly not considering any publicity-inspired offers,” deli spokeswoman Cristyne Nicholas told The New York Daily News.
She said president Marian Harper-Levine wants to keep the deli’s name and associated meat processing plant and bakery running.
Carnegie Deli opened its doors 79 years ago and was once one of several Jewish-owned delis in the theater district. In recent years, most of the other delis has closed, and Carnegie became a tourist favorite for its $20 iconic sandwiches, bursting with stacks of pastrami and corned beef.
After the New York flagship closes, there will still be outposts in Las Vegas and Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO