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2nd Avenue Deli Wins Right To Serve "Instant Heart Attack Sandwich"
By
Ben Yakas
Published Jul 8, 2012
Modified Jul 8, 2012
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By
Ben Yakas
Published Jul 8, 2012
Modified Jul 8, 2012
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For the better part of the last year, we've had frequent heart palpitations at the thought of the 2nd Avenue Deli losing the right to serve us the meat-infused pancake sandwich that gives our veggie-less lives meaning: the Instant Heart Attack Sandwich. And finally this week, a judge dismissed a Las Vegas restaurant’s claim that the deli stole the name. “We feel that we’ve been vindicated,” delighted deli owner Jeremy Lebewohl told the News. “We’re doing what we’ve always done, what we do best, selling sandwiches.”
The 2nd Avenue Deli had been sued by The Heart Attack Grill, once a Phoenix-based chain that is now just a sole restaurant Vegas. “We believe you copied Heart Attack Grill's family of medically themed food items,” the restaurant said in its cease and desist letter. The Vegas restaurant has a whole medical-theme thing going on: waitresses wear sexy nurses uniforms, call customers patients, and “proudly represents that its food is unhealthful.” But the judge rules, “The deli, by contrast, is a kosher deli which serves kosher food in the style of a traditional Manhattan deli,” the judge said. “Its market does not remotely resemble that of HAG.”
Best of all, now the 2nd Avenue Deli can unleash its newest creation: the $34.95 “Triple Bypass” sandwich, which includes sliced deli meat made up of corned beef, pastrami, salami or turkey, and three latkes. Or as Lebewohl described it, “everything but the kitchen sink.”
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2nd ave deli
2nd avenue deli
instant heart attack sandwich
lawsuit
Ben Yakas
Ben Yakas is a former Gothamist reporter.
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