Noah Bernamoff at Mile End, his new Montreal-style deli, which opens Monday Jan., 25 in Brooklyn, New York.
The 15-pound vacuum-packed brisket is a juicy marble slab of fat and muscle, as long as Noah Bernamoff's arm as he lays it out on a deli table in Brooklyn.
The thinner, narrower half of the cut is commonly made into corned beef; the thicker, fattier end frequently ends up as pastrami.
Mr. Bernamoff cites a custom that splits the difference: "Montreal smoked meat traditionally takes the heart of the brisket," he says, pointing to the middle of the cut, and gambling that pastrami-loving New Yorkers can learn to love something new. His Montreal-style deli, Mile End, opens Monay in Brooklyn's Boerum Hill neighbourhood.
The mainstays will be Montreal-style smoked meat, which Mr. Bernamoff smokes, steams and slices himself, and bagels brought in from St-Viateur bakery in Montreal. New Yorkers have already embraced poutine, so why not smoked meat?
Kevin Albinder, 43, a manager at the famous Katz's deli on the Lower East Side, says he's "definitely curious" about Montreal smoked meat, but he's never tried it. "I get people from Canada in here and they swear by it," he says.
Ask other New Yorkers about Montreal smoked meat, and you get a different response.
"Sounds like a porno movie," says one patron at Katz's as he finished a Reuben on rye.
The Montreal bagel is another novelty in New York. Mr. Bernamoff turns up his nose at Manhattan versions, calling them "shiny and uniform."
"Montreal bagels are like snowflakes," he says. "There aren't two of the same."
Word of the new deli has set off a flurry of interest and speculation in New York's culinary community. The city that never sleeps has already discovered poutine, but Mile End will be the first place anyone can remember that serves Montreal's other delicacies.
"Call it pastrami or call it smoked meat. We call it delicious," The Brooklyn Paper wrote after sampling Mr. Bernamoff's sandwich. The paper also remarked on the dearth of traditional delicatessens in the city.
"When I was growing up in New York, there were 50 or so great delis around," says Tim Zagat, founder and publisher of the Zagat Survey restaurant guides. "Now, there might be 10 left." A great delicatessen, Mr. Zagat says, smokes and cures the meat in house.
Bringing a new cuisine to New York links Mr. Bernamoff to a long tradition. When Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe began arriving in the city by the boatload in the 1880s, they brought their customs.
Pastrami and corned beef were more than favourite foods - they were the best way to preserve meat at a time when refrigeration was a luxury.
Beef could be wet-cured in a solution of salt and sugar, which yields corned beef, or dry-cured and smoked, resulting in pastrami.
"There's a disconnect between traditional deli and the way it's done today," says Mr. Bernamoff, who wants to revive the old culture. Every corner store in New York will give you a cold pastrami sandwich, he says, but "that's not what deli is all about."
A graduate of McGill University, Mr. Bernamoff, 27, moved to New York in 2007. He finished two years at Brooklyn Law School before deciding to open Mile End, named for the old Montreal Jewish neighbourhood where his grandparents lived.
"This is my first time starting a business, let alone a deli," he says. He's paid a consultant to help him negotiate the challenges of leasing, renovating, licensing and readying the establishment - a process he embarked on last June with his wife, Rae Cohen, 25, and their families' support.
"The hardest was selling my parents on my leaving law school," Mr. Bernamoff says.
But the real challenge lies ahead.
For the deli to succeed, says Mr. Albinder of Katz's, Mr. Bernamoff had better have "a lot of guts."
Special to The Globe and Mail