Fork It Over The Intrepid Adventures of a Professional Eater-Mantesh by Unknown (rm book recommendations .TXT) 📕

as “The Main.” To this day, Saint Lawrence is an ethnic neutral zone, dividing eastern, French-speaking Montreal from western, English-speaking Montreal.

Saint Lawrence no longer feels like the first step in every immigrant’s excursion into the New World, a place where avant-garde meant chicken liver light on the chicken fat. Today a restaurant customer is as likely 1 4 8

A L A N R I C H M A N

to be offered a Bellini as borscht. In part the changes have come about because of a Jewish exodus from Quebec. The Parti Québécois has never done anything to Jews except encourage them to stay in Quebec, but whenever Jews find themselves in a culture that seems intolerant of linguistic and cultural diversity, they start packing. The Jewish population of Montreal, once well over one hundred thousand, is slowly but inexorably declining.

There have been reverberations. Montreal’s legendary smoked meat, which tastes a little like corned beef and a lot like pastrami, hasn’t been the same since the Parti Québécois came to power.

The one restaurant on The Main that has not changed is the Montreal Hebrew Delicatessen and Steak House, known everywhere as Schwartz’s. The Schwartz brothers are long gone, but the fame of this delicatessen and steak house (it really isn’t either) has never faltered.

Schwartz’s has been in business since the 1920s, which is almost certainly the last time a decorator stopped by. The joint is long and narrow, with a single aisle that might have been the prototype for aisles in the coach-class sections of aircraft. On one side is counter service; on the other are tables with seats for six or eight. Communal dining works effortlessly here, because Schwartz’s customers have been eating at Schwartz’s for so long they understand the art of not annoying strangers.

The waiters are fine if you order what everybody orders at Schwartz’s—smoked meat medium, Coke, french fries. They are too old and ireful to deal with variations. Each and every one has mastered the art of putting your food down in front of you and quickly turning away before you can ask for something extra.

The smoked meat is hot, thick, and peppery, and it looks just swell, but for decades I’ve been thinking it isn’t as good as it used to be. Vic Vogel, an acquaintance of mine who grew up a few blocks from Schwartz’s, always orders his with extra fat. You can specify lean, medium, or fat, but nobody I know asks for extra fat except Vogel, who is sixty and apparently in good health. He says as long as you eat a F O R K I T O V E R

1 4 9

little pickle with it, the fat breaks down in your system. I wouldn’t ordinarily believe such nonsense, but he says his mother eats just like he does and she’s ninety-five.

The french fries are superb. I don’t believe I’ve ever visited Montreal without stopping at Schwartz’s for fries, even if it means double-parking outside and running inside for a bag. The Cokes are warm.

They have always been warm, even back when they were Pepsis. It can be minus forty degrees Celsius outside (which is the same as minus forty degrees Fahrenheit, one of the things you learn when you live in Montreal) and the Cokes at Schwartz’s will be warm. Should you attempt to get ice from your waiter, he will return ten minutes later with a glass holding the two smallest ice cubes you’ve ever imagined, ice cubes that will have no effect at all on the warmth of your Coke.

Up the street is Moishe’s, a steak house that was once a lot like Schwartz’s, but the owners put some money into fixing the place up.

At best they had mixed results. Outside, Moishe’s looks a little too much as if it’s boarded up. Vogel calls the interior “Jewish provincial,” a pretty good description. Moishe’s was founded by the late Moishe Lighter. His sons, who now run the place, don’t let you forget. Open the menu and the first thing you see is a full-page photo of Moishe.

“Moishe was a very happy man,” Vogel says. “As you were leaving, he’d hand you a candy and say, ‘Don’t go to Schwartz’s.’ ” If Schwartz’s looks like it’s from the twenties, Moishe’s looks like it’s out of the seventies, which isn’t good, considering that it was remodeled in the eighties. Even the customers look like they’re from the seventies. As I was walking in, the guy walking out was bundled in a massive fake-fur coat that he could have picked up at Joe Namath’s garage sale. The customers, few of whom are youthful, tend to dress in business suits and sequined dresses. Vogel calls them “Jews of a certain generation.” He’s not Jewish, but he can get away with talking like that because everybody thinks he is.

Moishe’s can be wonderful, especially if you get the right waiter, which we did. We got Franky, who has been there for forty-three years and still looks young, a testament to the curative powers of marinated 1 5 0

A L A N R I C H M A N

herring in cream sauce. Proudly he told me, “In 1976 I served the pope.

It was during the Olympics, and he wasn’t the pope yet, just a cardi-nal, but he was a nice man. He had pickled salmon and a sirloin steak.” Good choices. I went right for the full Eastern European experience—hey, why do you think Cardinal Karol Wojtyla ate at Moishe’s?

My appetizer was irrationally salty schmaltz herring that tasted as though it had come right out of a barrel that had come right off a boat.

Then I had the chopped liver, as dense and dark as chopped liver gets.

Chopped liver is very serious food in English-speaking Montreal, and Vogel says the reason is that French-Canadian butchers had such a small appreciation of liver they’d practically give it away. “My mother would always give me a dime, send me to