I don’t like holiday planning very much. It’s time-consuming and stressful and I’d rather wander aimlessly than rigidly adhere to an itinerary. The best things nearly always happen when impulsiveness and spontaneity are in play.
Recently I wrote about Sam’s Pizzeria in Brooklyn: I stumbled upon it and learned of its global fame afterwards. No technology required.
But a little bit of research doesn’t hurt. Only a fool wouldn’t ask experts where to eat and drink when exploring somewhere new.
In Montreal, two names were uttered more than others. One was Joe Beef in the Little Burgundy neighbourhood. It’s an energetic hotspot with a food crowd propelled in part by a historic visit from Anthony Bourdain.
He revelled in its rich, buttery “French market” cuisine, where baked clams are served on top of vintage radios and winter squashes are stuffed with rich sausage meat. The lobster spaghetti is famous. Too sweet for me – much like the bagels in Montreal – but good.
The other was Schwartz’s, a Jewish deli on Saint Laurent Boulevard and a relic of Eastern European migration. Reuben Schwartz, a Romanian, founded his deli in 1928, and it remains as busy as it ever was, diners crammed in on wooden seats, a near-endless reel of posters on the wall, French signage and white-shirted waiters.
Here is a business older than some Canadian towns; an institution, a landmark, and the purveyor of sandwiches that have an impact. To eat one is to taste the makings of a 100-year-old era while perched on a 1970s stool, life frantically moving around you.
That life might be a band of hungry hockey players, a small man hunched over squeezing mustard, Céline Dion or the Rolling Stones, a couple deliberating over who gets the last French fry.
It is busy because the food is remarkable. Schwartz’s signature sandwich is made with Montreal-style smoked meat, where brisket has been rubbed with herbs and spices and left to marinate for 10 days. It is smoked overnight, steamed throughout the next day, and then sliced à la minute.
And then in between two slices of rye bread goes a munificent mountain of dark pink beef, thickly sliced. It is delicate and soft, but thick and filling, the meat ballasted by rendered, perfumed fat. There is a smoky tang to it, and pointed moisture, a rodeo of flavour, bolstered by an old brick oven that has not been dampened by unnecessary cleaning.
Whoever’s serving behind the counter will be efficient and perhaps a little guarded. They will ask you about the fat. Sandwiches at Schwartz’s are categorised thus: lean, medium, medium-fat or fat.
Medium and medium-fat are apparently the most popular. Those around me were demonstrative to that end. And so I had the latter.
To date, it is the finest sandwich I’ve eaten, and I have eaten many – from a near-perfect club sandwich in Magaluf to a wagyu sando in London. The meat at Schwartz’s has an identity like no other, a complex amalgamation of spices deep within it. Its texture, meanwhile, is masterly: easily torn into frayed edges but not melting away into obscurity.
The classic accompaniment to one of these sandwiches is a plate of French fries – at Schwartz’s they are top tier – and a pickle, heavy in vinegar. To drink? A cherry soda. Why this has become the norm I do not know.
A smoked meat sandwich might not sound like much. But it is the summit of what a sandwich can be: utterly, buoyantly delicious, and wholly inclusive, a means by which to rid the world of dissonance thanks to an accessible price tag (about a tenner in pound sterling) and a tasting profile that even the fussiest eater would cherish.
Ever since I returned from Montreal, I’ve been thinking about this sandwich, about Schwartz’s. It is one of those places that acts as an embrace.
