“Musicians don’t work very much,” Zach Frankel says with a smile. His brother Alex, of the DFA duo Holy Ghost!, laughs. The brothers have just opened Frankel’s Delicatessen & Appetizing in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, so Zach has thought about this a bit—"this" meaning, why it seems like more and more musicians are embracing their inner-gourmand as of late. “They have plenty of time to eat food and talk about food,” he says, “and meet up with their friends to talk about and eat food.”

Zach’s idea about the musician lifestyle does hold some water, but there’s got to be more to it than that. On one hand, bands tour, so their members have more opportunities than most to see the world and try different foods along the way. On the other hand, they ride in vans and busses down long stretches of highway where their culinary options involve a drive-thru, maybe Waffle House if they’re lucky. Then there’s the day job thing. There’s a decent chance someone from your favorite band, before they “made it” (whatever that even means these days), found themselves bussing tables, taking orders, cooking on the line, or bartending.

Alex would like to edit his younger brother’s theory: It’s not that musicians don’t work very much, it’s that they don’t usually have to wake up early because of when they work. “We can meet up and have late dinners.”

There’s a different energy in a restaurant past a certain time, when all the first dates and business meetings are winding down, when the drinks seem to pour easier and the people there actually seem to like each other. Of course, these boozy late-night dinners lead to rough mornings (or early afternoons, to be more accurate), and that’s where one of the most intriguing items on the Frankels' menu comes in. The basic New York City egg and cheese sandwich, a staple of any hangover recovery program, is paired with another local favorite, pastrami. This is a sandwich that basically dares you to go out and get drunk just to have an excuse to eat one the next morning.

On a recent day at Frankel’s, we spotted Neon Indian’s Alan Palomo and the greatest mean-mugged dog ever, Sammie.

Late nights and long tours aside, the Frankel brothers’ new deli is far more than an excuse to flex their knowledge, like Alex’s label boss James Murphy did last year when he opened the Four Horsemen wine bar in Williamsburg. This runs a little deeper than that—it’s something from their past.