CENTRE ST DELI KNOCKS OUT CAPLANSKY’S

What’s a decadent Knish?

Broadway Danny Rose has volunteered to be my guide to the new rave – Caplansky’s Delicatessen at College and Brunswick.  “ I know you’ve had the Woody Allen special at the Carnegie Deli on Seventh Avenue, but that doesn’t make you a fresser, someone who gorges Jewish.”

More seriously, he doesn’t trust me to appreciate how Jewish identity and food cannot be torn apart.  A Frenchman might dismiss a putdown of a soufflé as the gripe of a grilled-cheese eating monkey but BDR would be wounded for his family and his people if I choked on a kishka. What’s a kishka? It’s a sausage, a beef casing stuffed with a bread mixture, food for very hungry people.  This isn’t food to kid about.

It’s been more than a year since Zane Caplansky started smoking brisket at the Monarch Tavern to acclaim. Brisket is an uncongenial cut rendered superfragiliscious by being pickled and then boiled as corned beef or smoked, or differently spiced as pastrami, rolled in peppercorns. I tremble as I write because there is a passionate debate about smoked meat, and about where to eat it. Montreal gets the smoked meat nod but New York’s pastrami is spicier.

Now Caplansky has opened his own place, blue and white tiles, a big counter where you can see meat carved. We secure a table outside where we’re joined by three wasps. Perhaps they’re the reason the waiter keeps away. After 40 minutes we are given  the $14 Caplansky’s combo. BDR blanches at first bite. “The meat is cold and tastes smokey – Smoked meat shouldn’t taste smokey! The two balls of chopped beef liver must have been churned out by the passing cement mixer… Mama Caplansky doesn’t know how to love.”

He takes a deep breath to swat down the latka, an almost raw potato pancake. Then the knish, puff pastry stuffed with meat. On a past visit to Caplanski’s, Ruth Reichl of Gourmet mag tweeted she’d just eaten  “the single most decadent knish ever made”

“Decadent knish?” BDR’s voice rises an octave. “They don’t have decadent knishes at the Carnegie Deli, let me tell you. They have huge healthy knishes.”

This knish has a burned strip of pastry beside dark meat.  BDR doesn’t even like the look of a neighbouring table’s matzoh balls “Too small” he tells the eater.

“Terrible. Now you understand how seriously we Jews take our food. Time to go to Montreal –Centre St Deli in Thornhill.”

As the caddy purrs up Bathurst, I feel like the globe trekker time-traveling through the old stetls of Eastern Europe, It’s the Sabbath and the street is enlivened with groups of Hasidim, some with black sable cartwheel hats, some in sleek black satin overcoats.. “All different – like smoked meat” comments BDR.

Centre St Deli anchored in a shopping centre, has been a neighbourhood institution for 20 years. The meat is from Lester’s in Montreal, vacuum packed, then steamed and hand cut.

Walk right in and feel the welcome. Co-owner Cheryl Morantz has us seated in a flash and Ingrid is right there with cherry cola and tea. The menu covers the waterfront. The kishka is sedative. The latka is creamy potato with a rich crust, spiked by sour cream and  apple sauce.

The main event: the cold cuts platter $17.95 which includes corned beef, smoked beef  and Old Fashioned ie pastrami, coleslaw and fries. Seedless rye may be smeared with mustard– I go for Nance’s Sharp & Creamy – then poised on top of a pile of meat to make a bulging sandwich. Non jews use bread to hold the meat but BDR quotes the deli maxim,  “Customers should see the salami coming through the rye.’

Juicy (fatty), medium or lean? “if my mother and grandmother were here, they’d pick juicy. It’s a generational thing.” Says BDR. We both chicken out and order lean.

The meat is pale and smooth with the occasional fat vein, about 5 mm thick so the meat munches up satisfyingly. To me, corned beef tastes like the mellow pork Mortadella. We both like best the zing of the Old Fashioned.

I am surrounded by contented customers. No music, only the clink of silver on china, a kid shouting as he dives into the nipper’s menu.

Atlast a place where comfort food really means something.

**  Centre St. Deli, 1136 Centre St, Thornhill 905-731-8037. Wheelchair Access. Food and Tax, lunch for two: $42

1/2 star Caplansky’s, 356 College St, 416-500-3852 No wheelchair access. Food and tax, lunch for two $30

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 19th, 2009 at 8:03 am and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.