New to the Citi Field menu this year, the pastrami sandwich is available at a concession stand on the Field Level concourse behind left field. It’s also available elsewhere, but I’m pretty sure this is the one you want.

Every sandwich is made with meat hand-sliced fresh from the brisket, weighed out on a scale to six ounces — plenty of meat for a sandwich on regular-sized bread*. The guy making my sandwich then squirted mustard on one slice of rye and pressed it up against the other, ensuring even mustard distribution across both slices. That’s going the extra mile. Oh, and it comes with a pickle:

I don’t normally eat a lot of pastrami, but even as a novice I can tell this is a hell of a pastrami sandwich. The big challenge I’ve always found in cooking brisket is keeping it moist, but that’s not an issue here. This is meatjuice-dripping-down-your-arms moist. Tasty too, by no means overseasoned but with the flavor of coriander lingering after every bite.

The bread is soft — maybe too soft. I generally prefer rye that’s chewy around the crust, and this wasn’t exactly that. It didn’t take anything away from the sandwich, but I think good, strong, flavorful rye can often add something. The mustard tasted like mustard and the pickle was predictably amazing.

It’s $10.50, which is a lot. But then the touristy deli stops in Manhattan charge way more. They also give way more meat, but that seems like more of a gimmick than an effort at a well-proportioned sandwich.

*- Speaking of which: When I worked at the deli we were told to aim for about 1/3 pound of meat for sandwiches on bread or regular rolls and 1/2 pound for sandwiches on heroes. We never measured it out because with a couple weeks’ worth of meat-slicing experience it becomes pretty easy to eyeball amounts. I always tended to go a little bit over on my sandwiches, figuring people could always take meat off the sandwich.

But one time, in my first week, a guy asked for an “American.” That wasn’t on the menu, but he meant the standard ham-turkey-roast beef-cheese combo familiar from six-foot catering heroes. I kind of lost focus while slicing the guy’s ham and gave him about a full sandwich’s worth, and the roast beef we had was tough to slice thin, so he wound up with a lot of that. Then I wanted to make it look even so I gave him a lot of turkey too.

He wound up with a full pound of meat on his sandwich. I know because he took it back and showed it to my boss after he opened it, and I got my first (and only) stern talking-to about sandwich construction. Looking back on it now: Why’d you sell me out like that, guy? I gave you a pound of meat! You could take half of it off the sandwich and have enough to make another massive sandwich later in the day. C’mon, guy.