Smoked Meat in Montreal

A Montreal-style smoked meat sandwich is…

Well, it’s a pastrami on rye.

That’s minimizing of course. It’s a cured smoked piece of beef similar to pastrami, though the spice rub used is different (they appear to use the curing spices–mustard seed, juniper berry, coriander, bay leaf, etc–rather than the pepper and coriander mix that is typical of pastrami) and the smoked meat I’ve tasted was less salty. The differences are subtle, and not enhanced by the similarities in presentation.

So how did this New York specialty wind up being a cultural favorite in French Canadian Montreal? The answer is that Jewish culinary traditions are represented strongly in each place. Montreal has the second largest Jewish population in Canada, and while you can get your latkes, your rugelach, your pickles and challah, there are two items that stand out so much that Montreal is considered to have its own style of them–bagels and smoked meat.

As it happens, Chicago even has its own purveyor of Montreal-style smoked meat. However, three years ago on this very site I profanely swore to never patronize that establishment again. There was only one thing to do.

Road Trip

The lovely and tolerant (“Why are we flying to Montreal to try a sandwich you can get in Chicago?” Because I would rather spend a couple thousands bucks for a vacation with you, my love, than spend another dime on that place) Mindy and I arrived in Montreal early on a Friday afternoon and promptly took a taxi from the airport, bags in hand, to a completely unrelated food destination that we knew we simply must try while in town, nestled between a Mercedes Benz dealership and a McDonald’s: Gibeau Orange Julep.

This place is known for it’s orange drinks called Orange Juleps that are similar to an Orange Julius but less slushy (side note: Canada also has Orange Julius) and also for being shaped like a giant damn orange. Mindy ordered an unremarkable roast beef sandwich while I went for a hot dog, “all dressed,” and a side of poutine.

The poutine was much like any other poutine I’ve had, great in concept but a little boring in execution and would probably have been much better when drunk. The hot dog was a different story, not stellar by any means but great care had been taken in toasting the sides of the bun perfectly and the mustard/onion/relish combination, with a bit of a fermented funk to the relish, was an interesting combination of flavors along with the skinless Nathan’s hot dog.

Thus replenished after our short journey, we boarded the Metro a block away to head to our hotel in the old city (along with a jug of Orange Julep for reasons).

Old Montreal, a well-preserved section of the city near the docks, was spectacular, all monuments, fountains, grand old building and cobblestone streets. Our hotel was lovely as well, with an balconies on each floor overlooking an atrium restaurant, exposed brick walls in our room, and extremely friendly, welcoming service. While the view could have been better, the window itself was quite beautiful.

It being our first night there, we weren’t ready to trek all over town looking for the smoked meat of our dreams quite yet, so we took a walk along the river and then a few blocks into the city to Montreal’s Chinatown. Our target was a small hand-made noodle shop called Nouilles de Lan zhou, where an open kitchen featured a man deftly pulling, twisting, and stretching dough into long thin noodles and dropping them by the handful into a boiling pot. We sat at a small bar and watched. His hands were literally a blur. I had a bowl of beef tendon soup, and Mindy tried their Sichuan dan dan noodles.

These noodles were obviously fantastic. The beef tendon soup had a rich broth, redolent with Chinese five spice, in which chunks of tender beef along with the chewier tendon pieces nestled on a bed of the hand-made noodles. The kitchen had made the dan dan noodles just a touch less spicy at Mindy’s request, and with less of the fiery chili oil to lubricate the noodles, the dish needed a little help so we added some of the broth from my soup. We passed the dishes back and forth a few times but Mindy wasn’t giving up much of those dan dan noodles.

Sated, we wandered around downtown Montreal in a daze for a while. We tried to get into the Museum of Contemporary Art, currently dedicating six galleries to a celebration of Leonard Cohen, but sadly it had closed early that night. Eventually we ended up at a bar called Sarah B, offering the “full absinthe experience,” though we settled for only a few cocktails each.

One, a combination of limoncello, lemon sryup, and absinthe, was so perfect, with such a beautiful balance between the sweet/sour of the lemon and the extreme herbal bitterness of the absinthe, that I engaged the bartender in conversation, wondering how an absinthe cocktail could be so well balanced and hoping he could recommend another. He lingered at our table, perhaps longer than he should have, and spoke at length in perfect, though accented English, about cocktails, food, and his city.

In the weeks leading up to our trip, so many folks had asked us if we spoke French, and told us about how difficult it is to get around in Quebec without some knowledge of the language, that I’d spent a few panicky hours practicing my bonjours and mercis, trying to do that back-of-the-mouth French R in a way that wouldn’t shame our son the linguist, but had resigned myself to repeated manglings of the phrase parlaiz-vous anglais instead. Nearly everywhere we went in Montreal, we’d heard French being spoken around us primarily. Yet we were consistently greeted with a bets-hedging “Bounjour/Hello” everywhere we went. Our bartender at Sarah B explained, “Only 20% of the people in Quebec speak English, but 80% of those are on the island of Montreal. If you left the island, then you’d have trouble.”

After this we retired to the hotel, where we mixed duty-free rum with Orange Julep and tried to watch French language TV before collapsing in bed.

Day 2

We started the day, after an extended period of trying to drag ourselves out of bed, picking up a few bagels at St-Viateur, one of the venerated bagel boulangeries in the Mile End neighborhood.

We ordered three bagels there–black (poppy seed), white (sesame seed), and all-dressed (an everything bagel).

The sesame seed bagel, fresh and still hot from the oven, was simply the best bagel I’ve ever eaten in my life. Its texture, chewy but soft, with a nicely browned but not tough crust, and its flavor, bready and a bit sweet, with the roastiness of the sesame seeds, brought to mind the sesame balls sometimes served as a bite at dim sum restaurants. As often noted, these bagels are smaller than most, with a larger central hole, but I found them perfect nonetheless.

After breakfast, we hiked Mont Royal for a time, then wandered the streets a bit. Montreal, like many cities, combines magnificence with seediness, and often on the same block, but one thing that struck me was that everywhere we looked, there was art.

In Old Montreal, the walls of buildings were illuminated at night by scenes from Montreal’s past, a series called Cité Mémoire. Out in the neighborhoods, murals were common. Even the Metro stations were decorated with abstract designs or tile mosaics or 3 dimensional geometric shapes. It was truly an interesting city simply to experience.

Sooner or later though, I was going to have to try that sandwich. We arrived at Schwartz’s, the universally recognized must-have smoked meat experience, early in the afternoon, only to find a line going down the block.

I was prepared for this. I was willing to wait. But then we saw that there was a smaller carry-out only door, with a much smaller line, and Mindy found a little park around the corner on Google Maps, and, well, we decided to forgo the full experience and duck out with a sandwich, a couple of drinks, and a Poutine a la Schwartz to go.

The park turned out to be a small children’s playground with a single bench occupied at that moment by a man deep in conversation with himself. Mindy and I set up on a small section of concrete foundation jutting out from the base of the building next door and dug in.

Now take a look at this sandwich. Really take a look at it. The deep red color is very nice, and the way the meat is piled up toward the center (much like the British Rail Sandwich but minus the paucity) doesn’t make for a very stable sandwich but it makes for a nice looking one. The meat, though. Doesn’t it look a touch dry to you? Here’s a cross section.

Maybe I just got unlucky. Maybe the sandwich you or your friend or some foodie celebrity had at Schwartz’s was nothing like this. Maybe the carryout counter is for suckers, the area where Schwartz’s sends all the tough, lean, and dried out sections of meat, and we should have eaten in the dining room. I’m told the line moves quickly. I do regret not waiting. But this sandwich was.. OK. It was not great, it was not the transcendent experience I’d been hoping for, nor was it worth flying to Montreal for. But to Schwartz’s credit, it was far better than what I’ve had in Chicago.

That poutine, though

This was something special. Got some bits of meat that are maybe a little older and they’re shredding when you try to slice them? Soak them in some gravy and serve them with fries and cheese curds! There was not a bit of this that went uneaten, and toward the end, Mindy and I were fighting over the last couple of curds. It may not be worth flying to Montreal for, but if you’ve got somebody you’d like to spend some time with, Montreal itself is worth a trip.

Redemption in an unlikely place

I should probably end it there. I had the sandwich, we enjoyed the city, Fin.

But wait, there’s more.

After an early dinner–well, more of a snack, really–at a dumpling place with truly terrible service where we were made to feel very uncomfortable and given the worst seats in the house (it was pretty bad, we ended up escaping through a side door they’d propped open for ventilation rather than the actual exit due to the trapped, claustrophobic feeling of the “table” we were given. We paid first, don’t worry!), and an even more uncomfortable Metro ride altercation with a pushy drunk who pursued us off the train when we left, we felt our lovely weekend getaway and the general sense of joy we’d felt so far in Montreal starting to unravel. We decided to get back to the reason for the trip and give the smoked meat sandwich another try. I had marked about a dozen different places serving them in our Google Map for the trip, and the nearest was the downtown location of a small chain called Dunn’s Famous.

After a brief sidewalk debate on whether we should get a sandwich or head down the alley for some XXX Massage instead, reason (and hunger) won out. I’m not sure what the other Dunn’s locations are like, but this one straddled the gap between chain sports bar and dive fairly comfortably, though with a bit of a lean in one direction.

I ordered their large smoked meat sandwich–I suppose they have a small one to appease the people that think sandwiches should be reasonably sized–and our waiter, who was also the bartender, asked whether I wanted it lean, fatty, or somewhere between. Thank you. I wish someone had asked me at Schwartz’s. I requested the happy medium.

Constructed the same as the Schwartz’s sandwich, with the top slices of bread and meat practically falling off the sandwich, this was everything the Schwartz’s sandwich should have been, with a nice balance of fat to keep the cured brisket, a meat which can often be dry and stringy, from getting stuck on the way down.

It was saltier than the Schwartz’s meat as well, which may simply have been an effect of the fat retaining salt more readily than the lean. At the bottom of the sandwich, there was a small layer of bark, but nothing like the pile of twigs, seeds, leaves, and pointy bits I’ve been served elsewhere. I was happy with this sandwich.

On a whim, I decided to also check out another Quebec specialty previously covered on the Tribunal, the hot chicken sandwich.

I think I got it pretty close, though the gravy here was top notch and far better than what I’d been able to produce.

Our joie de vivre restored by this substantial nosh, as well as by the accompanying cocktails, we repaired once again to the comforts of our highly bourgeois hotel room, more rum, and other frivolous fun. The following morning, I had just enough time to dash over the St-Viateur for a sack of warm bagels (and a package of sliced smoked meat that got us briefly detained at customs) before heading to the airport for our return flight home.

Merci, Montreal. You were great.