Ha ha. Awaiting your declaration.
Seriously, there is an art to slicing smoked meat correctly. Smoked meat cutters in Montreal commanded good salaries back in the day. (I worked my way through school in a deli.) I can tell by the sound of the tools in use whether it's being done correctly. If you do it wrong, it sits between the bread slices badly, is too thick, maybe tough, or too fatty or too lean, with not enough spice around the edge.
Then there's the bread itself.
I am not being a Montreal snob here, honest, but I think we can agree that, when it comes to bread, croissants and bagels, it's much easier to find the good stuff in Montreal than here. I have yet to eat a decent Vienna roll (what is called a Kaiser bun in TO) here. And the white rye just is not the same at all. It's not because Toronto is bad at baking while Montreal is good, although the French culture made bread and pastry in Montreal much better than in Toronto for a long long time. It's the different kinds of Jewish immigration. Deli culture is based on Jewish Romanian cuisine, which is what kicked off Montreal delis because the Romanians went there. It's no accident that the original "Montreal steak spice," which is basically what goes on the brisket, contains eastern spices such as coriander seed. (Best brand to buy in Toronto, if you can find it, is Lester's. It's also great on salmon, btw.) But I digress. The Romanians settled in Montreal while my understanding is that the first Jews who fled Europe for Toronto came mostly from Poland and Russia. Since immigrants tend to settle where they know people, or where others from their towns or villages went, the food cultures diverged in Montreal and Toronto, with Montreal getting the Romanian end. That's why the bread is also different. People rave about Montreal bagels and always ask me to bring some back when I go home but, for myself, it's all about the rye!
Last but not least, I was disappointed to discover that Caplansky's uses beef for chopped liver. This is all kinds of wrong IMO. The poor Jews of eastern Europe did not have cattle but they did have chickens ... and they used every bit of them, for soup, for shmaltz, for chopped liver. I look forward to trying CJ's and am happy to see it on the menu. I hope it's chicken!!! with crispy fried onions.
