Offbeat Eats

After a flight back into Montreal, I usually like to stop off for a smoked meat sandwich on my way back home, usually ducking into Montreal proper for this. But a handful of minor delays at CDG resulting from luggage that had lost its tag had us arriving an hour later into Montreal, which mean that the normally bad traffic around the airport had grown to excessive, and going into the city just for a smoked meat sandwich would not have been efficient. Luckily, most residential parts of Montreal have pretty good shops and delis that will also sell you smoked meat sandwiches, so instead of battling traffic, I ducked into Southwest Montreal’s Côte-Saint-Paul neighborhood to check out Les Aliments Félix Mish.

The life of an engineer with international travels means that, in addition to my own recreational travel, I’m often having to dart off to distant locations for work, on a tighter schedule than I’d usually book. In this case, I had to fit a trip to Grenoble and Paris in France in between two other personal trips, and the best overall location for both cost and schedule was catching the red-eye out of Montreal Trudeau International Airport. As I’ve discussed many times here at Offbeat Eats, airports aren’t exactly focal points of good cuisine, and the typical fare is both expensive and disappoint. But every once in a while I’m pleasantly surprised, and this time it was in Area 51 of the YUL airport, between the main screening area and the smaller international departure lounge sits Archibald. This was the perfect opportunity to fortify myself for an overnight flight with that cornerstone of Montreal cuisine, the smoked meat sandwich.

After a very pleasant day touring around Montreal (including another visit to one of my favorite brewpubs, Dieu Du Ciel, it was unfortunately time to head back to Dorchester Square, board the bus, and ride back to the US. But our schedule had just enough time in it for us to enjoy one last culinary stop in Montreal: to have a quick smoked meat sandwich. We ended up selecting Dunn’s, for one of several reasons: Dunn’s is right by Dorchester Square, so it was conveniently located Dunn’s is one of the respected places for a good smoked meat sandwich And Dunn’s also has some culinary history with respect to the name “smoked meat” itself

Quebec isn’t just another province in Canada: it has it’s own language (Quebecois French, which, as my French colleagues like to point out, resembles Continental French, but has a distinct vocabulary and accent), it’s own culture, and, particularly, it’s own cuisine. In particular, it’s rather hard to drive through Quebec without noticing all the businesses advertising poutine (I’ll get back to the topic of poutine in my next article), Montreal-style bagels, and Montreal-style Smoked Meat (aka “viande fumée”, or even, if being a string Quebecois French constructions, “boeuf mariné”). Which brings up the question of “What is Smoked Meat?” It’s really a specific style of prepare beef. Several references claim it’s basically “pastrami”, which is closer, but isn’t quite right, either. However, it shares the basic preparation style with pastrami: the meat is spiced, cured in a brine, “smoked” (which is really more of a roasting step than a proper smoking) and, finally, steamed it until the connecting tissues within the meat break down into gelatin. Where it differs from pastrami is in the spicing and smoke, the result being something approximately halfway between corned beef and pastrami, leaving a bit more of the natural beef flavor. The best description I’ve heard is “the flavor of pastrami but the mouthfeel of corned beef”. If you like a good pastrami, you’ll like smoked meat, although it’ll be a matter of taste which one you really prefer. As far as getting smoked meat, Montreal is full of delis that specialize in it. And one of the classic places to get it Schwartz’s Deli…