Glad to hear you know about Bahn mi. It's a mind blowing experience, especially to the uninitiated.
I understand your gut instinct (pun intended) about east coast vs west coast pastrami. Here is my take on the situation having had plenty on both sides of the coast. Yeah, they invented it on the east coast. But the true masters left for the west coast and settled on Fairfax in West LA. Having said that, you wouldn't catch me dead there, as they feel it reasonable to charge $20 for a sandwich that I can consume in a sitting. They are killing the golden goose. Sure, the tourist will drop a $20 for the experience, but you wont catch a local there unless they are showing around out of town family, or celebrating a once a year type thing.
I was going to mention muffalettas in my first post, but felt I was getting wordy already. One type of sandwitch I actually feel is very overrated is a po' boy. I have only ever eaten them in NO (my favorite eating city by far), and I have always been underwhelmed by the dry, breadiness of them. A muffaletta on the other hand, almost always good.
I too, have a strong passion for a good 'witch, and hope to sit across from you at a table somewhere in this great country of ours and dig in. Thanks for the happy thread.