FEATURE: Too soon to mourn deli’s demise

Wolfshead smoked salmon bagel  SCHMALTZ APPETIZING PHOTO

Some are calling it the end of an era. A string of Toronto’s deli-style Jewish establishments along the Bathurst Street corridor have recently closed – from Marky’s Deli & Restaurant in 2012 to Moe Pancer’s Deli last month. 

And Daiter’s Fresh Market will officially shutter this spring.

The closures seem to suggest that Jewish fare of the traditional eastern European variety is in decline.

Certainly, a shift in North American Jewish food culture has been in the works for several decades, as both the kosher and “kosher-style” commercial centres in cities like Toronto have moved on somewhat from Ashkenazi staples – foods including smoked meat and brisket – to Mediterranean, Israeli-influenced cuisine.

The old-world Jewish delicatessens and shops established from roughly the 1930s to 1950s by eastern European Jewish immigrants, have, in many ways, been supplanted by falafel, hummus and Israeli salad eateries, both kosher and not – think King David Pizza, Tov-Li, Dr. Laffa and Aroma Espresso Bar (the chain has announced it will open its first kosher location this spring).

Toronto food writer David Sax’s 2009 book Save the Deli explores the Jewish deli’s waning popularity from the 1970s to 1990s, when Jewish immigration from eastern Europe (with the exception of Soviet Jewry) dropped off, and deli fare become less central to subsequent generations of North American Jews.

“For younger generations, their grandparents may have eaten knishes on a daily basis, their parents on a weekly basis… They only have it on holidays,” Sax said.

Further, from the 1980s to the early 2000s, Sax said, Israel became the cultural centrepiece for many Canadian Jews.

“All of a sudden, there was hummus and falafel everywhere. And that’s only grown in recent years, as more [Canadians] travel to Israel because of trips like Birthright, and as Israeli food becomes more respected globally.”

He cited the bestselling 2011 cookbook Jerusalem: A Cookbook, written by Jewish and Arab chefs Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi.

“Go to any house in [upscale Toronto neighbourhoods] Rosedale or High Park, and Jerusalem is there next to Julia Child – that food is now part of the greater culinary zeitgeist.”

Still, the popularity of Middle Eastern cuisine and the disappearance of some deli mainstays haven’t, it turns out, spelled the deli’s demise in Canada.

In Montreal, the Jewish-style deli remains a cultural linchpin for locals and tourists of varying backgrounds, albeit not for the kosher set. 

Katherine Romanow, 30, and her friend Sydney Warshaw run The Wandering Chew in Montreal, which offers pop-up dinners in various places, focusing on lesser-known Jewish ethnic cuisines.

“On the kosher food scene,” Romanow said, “as far as I know, nothing new has opened recently. Outside that, there are the mainstays like Schwartz’s deli… There’s no decline in interest there.”

In Toronto, the last five or so years have seen several new Jewish food trends, including the emergence of nouveau Jewish delis and chefs putting contemporary spins on standard Ashkenazi fare.

The “nouveau Jewish delicatessen,” as Sax dubbed it, began to spring up around 2007 with places like downtown Toronto’s popular, Jewish-style deli Caplansky’s. And native Montrealer Noah Bernamoff’s Mile End Deli in New York City opened 2010. 

These spots and their success heralded a return to the homespun Jewish deli.

“From the 1950s onward,” Sax said, “Jewish delis were increasingly industrialized. Instead of making meat or bread in-house, they would buy it, because it was cheaper and easier. It would then be made with more preservatives and chemicals. What these new delis started doing is going back to basics – making their own bread, curing and smoking meat from scratch.”

Though the trend has lagged a bit on the kosher scene, in 2013, Ben Venasio and Izzy Bernath opened what Sax called “the first nouveau kosher delicatessen anywhere in North America.” 

Ben & Izzy’s, at Bathurst Street and Wilson Avenue, serves meats hand-cured and smoked daily by Venasio.

“In my opinion, Venasio said, “there’s an oversaturation of Middle Eastern kosher restaurants in the city. And I thought it was really sad that there were all these Jewish-style delis opening, but no honest-to-God, kosher deli where people could get properly cured meats and not stuff from a factory.”

Close on the heels of the new deli trend has been a recent outcrop of trendy, non-kosher, Mediterranean-eastern European fusion restaurants.

In 2014, chef Anthony Rose opened Fat Pasha, an eastern European-Middle Eastern fusion restaurant on Dupont Street. It features Israeli salads and falafel alongside schmaltz fried rice, brisket and gravlax.

Behind it is his smoked fish shop, Schmaltz Appetizing, which also opened last year. 

There’s also Essen, a Dundas Street West establishment opened in September by Leor Zimerman, which features a hybrid of Mediterranean and eastern European – though not, Zimerman stressed, deli-style food – and what he called a “yiddishe vibe.” 

“My branding leans towards that kind of esthetic,” he explained.

Essen’s menu contains cabbage rolls, brisket and chopped liver, but also falafel, za’atar and shakshuka. 

In Montreal, innovation is also stirring, though more gradually.

About a year ago, chef Jeffrey Finkelstein opened Hof Kelstein, a trendy spot on St.-Laurent Boulevard that serves borscht, matzah ball soup and challah, plus shakshuka and schnitzel. 

“It’s in line with this new Jewish food trend of taking staples and modernizing them, making them appeal to people in their 20s and 30s,” Romanow commented.

 Her venture, The Wandering Chew, is another such attempt. 

By hosting feasts informed by diverse Jewish communities, from Iraqi-Jewish to Scandinavian-Jewish, their goal, she said, “is to show people Jewish food can be delicious, but also introduce the variety of cuisine that makes up Jewish food.”

Sax attributes the rise of hybridized Jewish fare to the fact that Jews’ sense of self in Canada “isn’t strictly Ashkenazi, Mizrachi or Sephardi. It’s this blended identity… We’re just – Jewish. If you go to a kosher supermarket on Bathurst, it’s the same. Everybody wants all of it.”

While there’s undoubtedly a changing of the guard at play, Jewish chefs are increasingly finding their way back to Jewish food culture’s eastern European roots, be it through innovating the staples or resurrecting the Jewish deli.