Briney-licious.

I am a disgrace to my people. Forget the soul-piercing looks I receive for severely misbehaving at my once-a-year temple visit. And you might as well ignore my favorite pastime of washing down bacon strips with a cold glass of milk. (That’s not actually my favorite pastime…I’d much prefer pork sausage.)

But my capital religious offense is having never before tasted the salty succulence that Jews and goyim alike refer to as pastrami. (Until a few weeks ago, that is.)

Where better to be inaugurated into meatdom than at Katz’s Deli, a.k.a. Pastrami Mecca? (I believe that’s an oxymoron.) As soon as my tastebuds were united with the 12-inches of steaming sandwich, I knew I had found my soulmate.

The meat is so tender and softened by tubes of fat that it literally crumbles to juicy pieces in your mouth. I have never tasted a cut of meat with so much briney, spicy flavor in my life. I am hooked.

“People eat with their eyes as much as they do with their mouths,” my 7th grade art teacher squawked in one of her many in-class tangents. Mrs. Loverly. Or was it Loverling? It really doesn’t matter — neither surname was indicative of her appearance (hunched) or personality (cranky).

Yet as I sat in the handsome red and white dining room at davidburke & donatella, Mrs. L’s nasal banter resounded loudly in my head. Though my eyes were impressed by each beautifully-presented course (lobster bisque was carefully ladled into the empty soup bowl sitting before me; butterscotch panna cotta was served in a large martini glass), my mouth remained open not in awe, but in bewilderment. The orange bisque that had appeared to be creamy and robust left a bitter aftertaste, and the picturesque, golden-hued panna cotta was sweet enough to send me into diabetic seizure.

Perhaps Mrs. L. should have consulted another idiom. Yes, we eat with our eyes as much as our mouths, but looks can be deceiving.

Take my entree, for example. It looked like this:

But tasted like this:

The iron biceps of 10 Olympians could barely cut through the tough edges of my overcooked salmon. Not only was it lacking in flaky tenderness, but it also could have used a good dash of salt and pepper for flavor. I did like the tangy horseradish potatoes that modestly hid beneath the fish.

My friend, Steve, ordered the Wild Mushroom Cavatelli ($19). The thick pasta absorbed the smokiness of the mushrooms well, giving the dish a somewhat stewy consistency. My inability to further express my feelings toward the pasta prove its mediocrity. It neither surprised nor disappointed me.

The dessert (or work of art, more accurately) that does linger in my mind is the Cheesecake Lollipop Tree ($18). Smooth balls of cheesecake are encased by white, milk, dark or strawberry chocolate. Lollipop sticks protrude from the sweet spheres and are fixed like branches to the tree.

I’d rather frame this dessert and hang it on my apartment’s walls than eat it. I enjoyed it in the same way that I relish an Entenmann’s doughnut — it’s readily accessible and torments me with its sweetness, so why refuse it? In the long run, though, it just wasn’t worth the empty calories, and I end up looking like this:

davidburke & donatella
133 E. 61st St. (b/w Park Ave. and Lexington Ave.)
New York, NY 10065
212.813.2121

Price Rating: $$$$