by David Sax
But it’s the next fifty years that scare Cheryl and Sam more than anything else. Toronto is a city where pressure to shift away from the core of a Jewish deli is intense. “With all the demands that customers make,” Cheryl said, “in general, you’re [talking about] a food group that really is on its way out. . . . We used to make delicious herring, not just herring but schmaltz herring, I love herring, a fresh piece on rye bread, but nobody’s eating it. Now if we’re catering a funeral, they’ll ask for herring, and say, ‘My grandfather loved herring. Do you have any?’ And we say, ‘Your grandfather, rest in peace, was the last one to eat herring.’ We don’t even bother serving it anymore. So to answer your question about the future, in fifty years it’s bye-bye,” Cheryl announced.
“Especially doing something handmade. Slicing meat by hand,” added Sam.
“It’s bye-bye because it’s a demanding business overall,” Cheryl said, listing off reasons. “Bye-bye because eating habits have changed. Bye-bye because people’s expectations have not. It’s too bad, it’s just not profitable.”
Cheryl then said something to me that I’d heard repeated by Montrealers countless times: Torontonians didn’t know deli. It wasn’t an insult or a matter of civic pride, but a statement of fact. While smoked meat sandwiches are still very much a part of Montreal’s Jewish culture, the same can’t be said of corned beef in Toronto. Few, if any, of my friends eat deli. They’ll indulge when visiting Montreal or New York, but I’m hard pressed to find any of them at Yitz’s or Moe Pancer’s. “Oh, you’re writing a book on deli?” they’ll ask. “Are there even any delis in Toronto?”
It breaks my heart that Toronto is a deli town with the potential for greatness, but with very little pride in its Jewish delicatessens. You’ll almost never find Torontonians abroad bragging about their delis the way New Yorkers do. And while there is no marquee institution like Schwartz’s or Langer’s, I regularly taste greatness in my hometown. I would put some of Toronto’s corned beef up there with the best on the continent. Yitz’s corned beef, which is barrel cured in the deli’s basement, is some of the most consistent, moist, and delicious corned beef anywhere. It is pink, ribbed with fat, and incredibly tender. One of the best corned beefs I’ve had anywhere was from the small Steeles Deli, run by Leslie Wong and his son Michael. Their briskets cure in a brine that is low in salt and contains such secret ingredients as brown sugar. The resulting corned beef, sliced translucently thin, is a wonder of gentle flavor, a sweetly tinged sandwich of candied, garlic-scented beef that liquefies the second you bite into it.
Toronto also boasts some of the finest hot pickled tongue anywhere. One of the best was from Coleman’s, a deli run by Carol Silverberg and her daughter Jodi. Tongues are pickled in a solution similar to corned beef and then boiled until tender. During one of my visits there, Carol led me to the basement kitchen, where Coleman’s cook, Joe, pulled a freshly cooked tongue still steaming from the pot, took a knife, and sliced a cookie-sized hunk off the fatty rear end of a tongue (the tip is leaner and, therefore, tougher). When I bit down, it just squished into salty velvet.
Toronto also serves a unique item, not found anywhere else in the deli world, called baby beef. In the 1940s, a Polish immigrant named Harry Eisen began dying veal briskets with red food coloring, passing them off as corned beef. Eventually the dye was banned, but Eisen renamed the product baby beef. Until recently, baby beef was a lightly brined brisket of milk-fed veal. When done properly, it is an unbelievably moist and supple product, a light appearance similar to corned beef with a creamy color and flavor. It is the most refined Jewish deli meat out there, a conduit for salt and garlic. I see it as the ultimate Toronto deli contribution: inventive, subtle, understated, yet undeniably delicious. Unfortunately, a lucrative export market in veal cattle has baby beef facing extinction in Toronto’s delis. Though it is regionally as unique as Montreal smoked meat, Toronto’s baby beef may likely be a historical footnote by the time you finish this book.
Toronto also makes its pastrami different from anywhere else. Delis take a fully cured corned beef brisket, rub it with pastrami spicing, and bake it briefly with water, effectively braising it. Though I absolutely love New York–style navel pastrami, the unique method of preparing Toronto’s pastrami creates a product that occupies a wonderful place on the spectrum of spiced, cured Jewish meats. Juicy and flaky like the brisket-derived corned beef, it nonetheless hits with the spicing of pastrami. The spices in Toronto pastrami tickle the taste buds without overwhelming them.
But despite this rich selection of delicatessen products, among my contemporaries deli simply isn’t eaten, and the primary reason for this is supposedly health. Deli, Torontonians are told, is bad for you. Actually, as I was lectured time and again, it will surely kill me. So far as my friends are concerned, this book might as well be the story of a kosher-style Supersize Me. Perhaps in the long run they will be right. If my arteries succumb to the fat and the salt, I owe them all a posthumous apology. But the effect this fearful mentality has had on the deli business in Toronto reflects that of cities all over the continent. Toronto’s Jews are avoiding deli like the plague.
When you walk into Wolfie’s, a small deli in North York covered in Coca-Cola memorabilia, a faded, grease-stained sign declares, “Our Meat is Always Lean. If You Want Fat you Have to Ask For It.” It wasn’t always this way. When he opened in 1975, Dave Gelberman served juicy briskets and pastramis. Back then, 90 per cent of his customers were Jewish. Today, the proportions are completely opposite; gentiles make up 90 per cent of Wolfie’s clientele, with elderly Jews hanging in the minority.
“I must be the only shmuck in the deli business who just keeps trimming his meat until there’s nothing left,” Gelberman said. “I used to carry tongue, baby beef, and chopped liver that my mother-in-law made forty pounds of every single Friday. We used to have a lineup out the door for that stuff . . . it was gold.” Wolfie’s is now doing two-thirds the business it did a number of years ago, and the deli has cut back on its hours. To Gelberman, young Jewish Torontonians hardly factor into his business at all. “They come in as often as they go to shul!” he said. Which, believe me, is not often.
The supposedly healthy appetites of my contemporaries have migrated elsewhere. Their Jewish food experience is now based on whole wheat bagels and tofu cream cheese. Israeli food has replaced deli, ostensibly because hummus and salads are indeed lower in saturated fat, salt, and preservatives. Moreover, while deli is the food of nostalgia, Israeli cuisine is the food of pride. Young Jews today know the past of Jewish Europe mainly from the Holocaust. But when they eat falafel, they are engaging in a solidarity of sorts with their brethren in the Middle East. They are indulging not in the memory of a lost time and place, but of a proud, courageous, sexy nation. A generation ago, ethnic foods were the occasional treat for Toronto’s Jewish stomachs. Today, it is a safe bet that on most nights of the week the food of Tuscany will feed far more of the Jewish households of Toronto than that of nineteenth-century Polish Galicia. At Jewish weddings and bar mitzvahs you’ll find more sushi than salami.
At delis around the city, the client base has become decreasingly Jewish, something that more than a few places consider a positive development for business, though not always taste. Take the case of Shopsy’s, once considered the top delicatessen in Toronto. In 1971, Sam Shopsowitz sold the family business to Lever Brothers, the Canadian arm of the Unilever soap conglomerate. Many in Toronto mark that very moment—when our most beloved, family-owned Jewish deli passed into the hands of a publicly traded corporation—as the beginning of the end. Over the years, ownership of Shopsy’s has passed from Unilever to the burger chain A&W, to private equity buyers, and mutual funds. It is currently owned by a family of local Irish pub magnates.
Successive owners have removed many of the Jewish items from the menu, replacing them with diner fare and baby back ribs. Shopsy’s brand corned beef, bologna, and even Shopsy’s bacon sell in Canadian supermarkets. The company has
opened several locations, attempted to franchise, and failed repeatedly. With each change of hands, the food’s quality has declined, as new owners have attempted to squeeze more profit out of a fading brand name. No one who seriously appreciates Jewish deli even acknowledges the existence of Shopsy’s. It is the fallen one, guilty of selling out so blatantly that calling it a Jewish deli is an insult to those who keep the tradition alive.
Other delis in Toronto have tried to emulate the path of Shopsy’s expansion in one way or another, with varying success. Over the years, their rival Switzer’s opened a dozen different stores, eventually selling them off one by one. Today, what remains of Spadina’s last deli is found on an industrial road just north of Toronto’s airport. Hy Beck, Switzer’s owner for over half a century, is still slicing meat, along with his daughter and co-owner Charise. “Expansion is a bad thing,” Charise Beck told me, handing me slices of their garlicky beef salami. “Your ass can’t be in two places at once.”
Several have learned this the hard way. Dave Gelberman attempted to open a second, more lavish Wolfie’s in the past and failed. In 2000, Mr. Yitz sold his business to Barry Silver, a local businessman who had grown up in the appetizing business. Though the food at Yitz’s always remained good, Silver had grand designs. In 2006, after much planning, Silver opened a second Yitz’s in the suburban development of Thornhill Woods. It lasted a year. According to those who briefly worked there, it was staffed with inexperienced employees. “Owner-operated is the secret of original delis,” Mr. Yitz told me. “It’s hard to franchise because delis are only successful when the owner is there.”
When I talk about saving the deli, it is based on the worry that these trends toward expansion and franchising, fat phobia, and diluting deli menus are going to eventually corrupt all of Toronto’s remaining delicatessens to the point where they are unrecognizable. I say this because there are many in the city that look to one former deli named the Pickle Barrel, see its financial clout, and salivate.
When it first opened back in 1971, the Pickle Barrel raised the bar on Toronto’s deli trade. Created by wealthy developers and headed by an experienced Deli Man ( Jerry Wiseblatt) and restaurateur (Sam Firestone), it brought big, Michigan-style suburban deli to Toronto. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, the Pickle Barrel was the place to be seen on a Sunday night. Half the menu was strictly Jewish, and two-thirds of sales came from delicatessen sandwiches. But the Pickle Barrel changed around 1990, when one of the financial backers told Wiseblatt that he wanted to move away from deli because customers were becoming more interested in healthier food. Wiseblatt soon left, opening the small New Yorker Deli downtown with his wife, where he still serves classic deli fare.
Into his position stepped Peter Higley, a former busboy at the original Pickle Barrel, who worked his way up to the president’s office. Well-dressed, fast-talking, and forward-thinking, he makes no bones about where the chain has gone and what it left behind. A few years back, Pickle Barrel dropped the word “Delicatessen” from all restaurants and menus. The smiling pickle mascot in a top hat also disappeared. One of the business models Higley has actually emulated is Jerry’s Famous Deli. “I like what Jerry’s have done,” Higley told me. “They’ve sexed up deli, made it nice.”
The newly refurbished Pickle Barrels now have more in common decor-wise with luxury condominiums. Halogen lights and plasma screens abound. My friend Tracy’s father has stopped eating there completely, because he finds the decor to be “pretentious,” a family restaurant masquerading as fine dining. But the real shock always hits me when I pick up the thirty-plus—page menu and play Where Has the Deli Gone? With over three hundred dishes to choose from, you can now find only six deli items: cabbage borscht, matzo ball soup, pastrami, corned beef, smoked meat, and brisket. Kishke? Gone. Kreplach? Kaput. The new Pickle Barrel is all about multiethnic and low fat, and sorry folks, deli is not considered ethnic and is by no means healthy enough for their customers. You can, however, order Spanish paella, P.E.I. mussels, Asian nachos, or Alaskan king crab legs. There’s also a five-hundred-calorie, nutritionist-approved menu.
As far as large chain restaurants go, the food at the Pickle Barrel isn’t bad. But every time I end up there, I always wonder whether some Thai restaurant somewhere is serving Reuben sandwiches, or an Italian place has a chopped liver pizza. I doubt it. Jewish delicatessens might be the only ethnic restaurants where the very cuisine the business is based upon has been actively phased out by the owners. It is one of the clearest examples of a self-imposed culinary assimilation, and here’s the thing . . . no one complains. In fact, many Jews in Toronto continue to view the Pickle Barrel as a deli.
Higley directed me to the company’s Web site, where complete nutritional information for every menu item was listed. But what I found didn’t necessarily justify the elimination of deli on the grounds of health. Cabbage borscht was only 80 calories, while a quarter-pound corned beef sandwich clocked in at 280 calories (34 per cent fat). Compared to the 920-calorie tuna sandwich it was a goddamned supermodel! Hell, you could combine a corned beef/pastrami sandwich, and still make it onto the 500-calorie menu.
It didn’t make sense. This wasn’t about lowering the calorie or fat count of menu items, it was about selling the idea that you were eating something better for you. “Rewind thirty years ago,” Higley said. “You ate what you ate and enjoyed it. Today, everything you eat, you’re second-guessing yourself. Health statistics and stories on the effects of nutrition are in the media all the time, and the Jewish people are very perceptive of this.” It was the same logic that had people getting fat out of McDonald’s salads, and it worked like a charm. If things progressed any further, a whole new generation would grow up thinking that Tex Mex Spring Rolls belonged in a Jewish deli.
Was this where the future of Toronto’s delicatessen business was heading? Toward menus that read like novels, smartly dressed servers fresh out of high school, and watered-down quasi-Jewish food? Every time I went to the Pickle Barrel on the insistence of others, I came out flustered. Weighted down by a sense of dread, I’d invariably head up Bathurst, where I’d arrive at Moe Pancer’s distraught and hungry.
“Heyyyyy Duvid,” Lorne Pancer would say, beaming each time I came in, “welcome back, bud!”
I came to Moe Pancer’s late in life, via my brother Daniel, but Lorne had been instrumental in helping me understand deli from the get-go. He was the first to teach me about the deli business. His veteran counterman, Wilf, taught me how to cut meat months before I went to Katz’s. Whenever I craved that deli atmosphere—the intoxicating smell of steaming garlic and the tumult of crashing dishes—I’d head to Moe Pancer’s, kibitz with Lori, the wisecracking waitress, and feast on Lorne’s tender corned beef. Mostly, I’d sit down with Lorne and talk deli. The conversation would always start off the same: Lorne will tell me about the latest flack he took from a longtime customer—“Can you believe this?” he’d say, in his sweet sportscaster’s voice. “I wanted to charge him for bread with his takeout meats, so he told me to fuck off.” Then he’d unleash a wry smile from beneath the gray mustache, roll his eyes as though he were Bugs Bunny, grin out of the right side of his mouth, and sigh, adding, “What can I tell ya,’ bud?”
Moe Pancer’s was opened in 1957 by Lorne’s father, Stan (son of Moe). As a Deli Man Stan Pancer was a staunch minimalist. “I am a deli,” he was once quoted as saying, “not an ‘and Restaurant.’ I am seven meats!” Corned beef, tongue, pastrami, brisket, baby beef, turkey, salami. These were the Pancer’s canon. When Stan died in 1999, Lorne stepped in, leaving his previous job as a stock trader. “To the Pancers, it’s a life sentence, baby,” Lorne joked. Looking at the photos of Stan, the resemblance between Lorne and his father is uncanny: the same high, gray hairline, the same broad shoulders and smile.
Places like the Pickle Barrel influenced the demands of Pancer’s customers. They want more, for less, and they expect Lorne to conform. But while change may work for others, it’s the first step d
own a long and dangerous path that could end by tacking the words “and Restaurant” onto Pancer’s sign. “If you want to fill to the masses, you have to feed the masses,” Lorne said. “I’m not going to water this place down for anything in the world. There’s tradition and there’s money. The questions I have to ask are how comfortable am I, and how comfortable do I need to be? We’re just trying to stick with what has made our lives. Yeah, it’s hard to stay loyal to a small client base and a small range of products, but it’s the honorable thing, Duvid. What would my zaidy have said? It’s not broken, and who am I to fix it? I’m a humble person taking on the traditions of two generations before me.”
Which is why I was so crushed, when, two years after writing down those words, Lorne told me in fall 2008 that he and his siblings were selling Moe Pancer’s Delicatessen. Each day he commuted nearly an hour to the deli, and he wanted more time with his family. Soon after, Coleman’s Deli closed up suddenly. For me, it was the ultimate blow for my hopes to save the deli in Toronto. Short of a savior, I feared that deli in my hometown was indeed doomed.
London: God Save the Deli
I had tried London’s Jewish delicatessen some years ago, on a cold night with my parents and our elderly cousin Betty. On Betty’s insistence we went to the famous Bloom’s Delicatessen, in the solidly Jewish enclave of Golder’s Green. Amid the peeling walls and the grumbling waiters, I ate one of the more appalling deli meals of my life. I remember cold soup, horrid bread, and latkes that could have been used as shells during the Great War. At one point, Betty, a fiery old broad in her nineties, upbraided the waiter when the Manischewitz wine didn’t meet her expectations. He shrugged with such indifference I suspected his head would disappear into his torso. The meal was memorable only in its awfulness, and I quickly concluded that Britain’s culinary atrocities had poisoned the Jewish kitchens of London.