Bagel, Bagelry, Smoked Meat and Deli As the Jewish Part of Montreal’S Culinary Heritage
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Institut lémanique de théologie pratique BAGEL, BAGELRY, SMOKED MEAT AND DELI AS THE JEWISH PART OF MONTREAL’S CULINARY HERITAGE. OLIVIER BAUER Bauer, Olivier (2014, October 23). ‘Bagel, Bagelry, Smoked Meat and Deli as the Jewish Part of Montreal’s Culinary Heritage.’ Food Heritage, Hybridity & Locality: An International Conference, American Studies Department, Brown University; Department of Anthropology, The Chinese University of Hong Kong; UNESCO Chair Project on Safeguarding and Promoting Cultural Food Heritage, University of Tours; RI Historical Society. 1. Introduction On July 13, 2011, Pierre Bellerose, ‘Public relations, Product research and development VP for Tourism Montreal’ invited his blog’s readers to ‘taste Montreal’s culinary heritage’. He drew a list of his ‘favorite addresses’, all ‘restaurants of another time’ that ‘kept their old character’. Among the ten cited restaurants, six were Jewish. Fairmount Bagel, opened in ‘1919, [by] Isadore Shlafman [ …,] first bagel bakery in Montreal, in an alley adjacent to Saint-Laurent boulevard’; Schwartz’s, ‘opened in 1928 by a Jewish immigrant from Romania: Reuben Schwartz’; Beauty’s, ‘opened in 1942 by Hymnie and Freda Sckolnick, in the Jewish neighborhood of the time’; Déli Lesters, opened in 1951; St.-Viateur Bagel, ‘opened in 1957, [it] is an integral part of Montrealers’ culture and daily life’; Moishes, ‘founded in 1938 by another Central European Jew (Moishe Lighter from Romania)’ (Bellerose, 2011). Pierre Bellerose’s list is peculiar in that, among the Jewish establishments, two sell bagels (we will qualify them as bagelries), three offer smoked meat (we will call them delis, diminutive of Delicatessen), only one, the tenth, is a more classical restaurant, namely a steak house. We can read a history of Judaism in Montreal in the following discourse: ‘One of the more striking aspects of Jewish life in Montreal has to do with food. Two specialties, smoked meat and bagels, have strongly contributed to making the community known, and even to giving it a certain fame beyond the city. It was foremost Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe who gave the Main their very distinctive culinary traditions. Steaming bagels, decorated with sesame or poppy seeds, were everywhere popular. In fact, Montrealers of all origins quickly converged on Saint-Laurent boulevard to give smoked meat its aura of living legend. Many people lived their first significant contact with Jewish culture when they finally went to the Main to taste the dish.’ (King, 2002: 115) Olivier Bauer – [email protected] Institut lémanique de théologie pratique – Faculté de théologie et de sciences des religions Université de Lausanne (Suisse) Institut lémanique de théologie pratique Our motivation in writing this article came from the remarquable concordance between Bellerose’s list and King’s remarks. It would seem that Montreal’s gastronomical heritage corresponds almost exactly and almost exclusively to Jewish culinary specialties. And it is a largely proven fact, an experience highly recommended by tourist guides and travel chronicles1, that in Montreal, bagels and smoked meat are the first dishes that one should taste. This would tend to overvalorize Jewish gastronomy in a city where Jews only make up 2.6% of the population2. 2. Method In this article, we adopted a process in three simple steps that we can present very briefly. In a first time, we will identify the main facts that make bagels, bagelries, smoked meat and delis artefacts of Montreal’s culinary heritage; for that we will mobilize both our own experience as a consumer and stories and essays around them. In a second time, we will choose a theory that will enable us to understand to which type and which grade of hybridity the presence of bagels, bagelries, smoked meat and delis in Montreal bear witness; we will borrow it from the study of religion which is used to treat questions of religious and cultural hybridity. Lastly, we will specify of which hybridity bagels, bagelries, smoked meat and delis are the signs; we will formulate hypotheses, which we will submit to different tests3. 1 On Schwartz’s reputation, Nash writes: ‘And should anyone wonder what “good things” people have said, the most famous accolades can be seen not only on the restaurant walls but repeated to such an extent in tourist guides, websites and newspaper columns that, long bereft of their original sources, they have come to have a currency of their own.’ Nash, A. (2011). Smoke and Mirrors? Montreal Smoked Meat and the Creation of Tradition. In H. Saberi (dir.), Cured, fermented and smoked foods: proceedings of the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery 2010 (p. 211–220). Totness, England: Prospect Books, p. 213. Alan Nash’s article was brought to my attention by Dr Susan Weingarten, Department of Jewish History à Tel Aviv University. 2 According to the 2001 Census, which contains the most recent numbers relative to religions, Christians represented 84.6% of the population and Jews, 2.8% (Muslims: 3%) (Source: Statistics Canada, « Certaines religions, pour les régions métropolitaines de recensement et les agglomérations de recensement – Donées-échantillon [20 %] ». Recensement de la population 2001). In 2001, Montreal hosted the second Jewish community in Canada, namely 92,970 individuals. Jews were 101,000 in 1991. 3 We renounce to discuss here the notion of ‘heritage’, ‘patrimony’ or ‘patrimoine’. Elsewhere, we have demonstrated the gendered dimension of the French term ‘patrimoine’ and the impossibility of including food in a ‘immaterial heritage’ category see: Bauer, O. 2009a. Le mot et la chose, l’hostie dans le matrimoine du Québec. Accessed: 2010, September 16 from: http://www.usask.ca/relst/jrpc/art(se)-Hostie_Matrimoine.html. We have proposed the use of the term ‘matrimoine’, especially to designate ‘culinary matrimoine’. ‘Recognizing a “matrimoine”, next to the “patrimoine” renews our outlook on heritage. It enables us to recognize the patrimonial – or matrimonial – value of goods, both material and immaterial, that are Olivier Bauer 2 Institut lémanique de théologie pratique 3. Some Facts Let us start by stating some facts about bagels and smoked meat. 3.1. What are bagels and smoked meat? What is a bagel? A sort of rounded bread with a hole in the middle. Yet Montreal’s is a specific bagel with a unique taste: ‘The “authentic” Montreal bagel [is] a sweeter, less chewy bread than its New York cousin.’ (Balinska, 2008: 185) This is due as much to its ingredients – adding malt and eggs to the dough – than to the way it is prepared: ‘There is not a sliver of stainless steel in either the St.-Viateur or Fairmount bakeries. Their bagels are rolled by hand; the ovens are wood-burning and never shut down; the hot bagels are tipped out into a long, wooden through set at an angle, rolling down slowly to the cash register and the customer at the head of the queue.’ (Balinska, 2008: 185) What is smoked meat? It is a dish à la mode de Montréal, the result of an intercultural recipe, adopted as much as adapted, indisputably Ashkenazi, familiar with multiple Central European countries. ‘While Montreal smoked meat’s origins may lie in Romania, Lithuania, or even the Lower East Side of Manhattan, it is now Montreal’s own. Outside the city it is always referred to as Montreal smoked meat, but in Montreal, it is simply called smoked meat or le smoked meat and is earn with religious devotion.’ (Sax, 2009: 195) 3.2. How are bagels and smoked meat prepared? Preparing a bagel requires a specific technique: ‘[The baker] first needs a fast gesture of the hand to roll a ring directly from a long strip of dough. The round bun is then dipped for about five minutes in boiling water to which honey was added. An experienced worker can roll up to a thousand bagels an hour. The bagels are then sprinkled with sesame or black poppy seeds, and are then placed on a long board (shiba in Yiddish) which serves to insert them within the hearth next to the fire.’ (King, 2002: 120) Bagels are sold by the piece, or preferably by six or the dozen. It can be eaten on the spot, in front of the bagelry – whole or sliced and filled with cream cheese or smoked salmon, for example – or be taken away for later, but quickly as it loses its taste quickly. ephemeral, that have no market value nor owner, that are constantly evolving. The term valorizes the essential role that women play in the constitution of “patrimoine” and “matrimoine”, in their conservation, their interpretation and their transmission.’ Bauer, O. 2009b. Les goûts du matrimoine religieux. In: S. Lefebvre, éd. Le patrimoine religieux du Québec. Éducation et transmission du sens. Laval : Presses de l’Université Laval, pp. 109-122. Olivier Bauer 3 Institut lémanique de théologie pratique Smoked meat is prepared with pieces of Alberta beef, seasoned with a highly secret spice mix based on coarse salt, ground pepper, garlic, herbs and sugar. They are then marinated during a week, smoked for multiple hours and steamed4. Finally, they are cut by hand in very thin slices. Smoked meat are served on a plate or on slices of rye bread seasoned with mustard and topped with gherkins (Sax, 2009: 197). The result is typically Montreal5 and savoring it is a real sensory experience, described in poetic terms by Sax: ‘The waiter deposits the pièce de résistance, a smoked meat sandwich barely holding itself together, the fast strips of streaming meat hanging over the edge of the bread that defies the urge to collapse against all of Newton’s laws. The meat is a wild mess of carnivorous beauty: at parts, black and sticky, at points a light rose, mostly a meaty maroon.