Schwartz’s turning back the clock on prices

London’s Financial Times once trumpeted: “A beef on rye to freeze to death for!” in describing a Schwartz’s smoked-meat sandwich. We’ll find out soon enough. To mark its 90th anniversary, the Montreal Hebrew Delicatessen — much better known as Schwartz’s — on the Main will be turning back the clock on its prices and offering a smoked-meat sandwich, fries and a Coke for $1.09 on Tuesday between 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. Lineups could extend from one end of the Main to the other, and with the temperature hovering somewhere between minus-5 C and minus-8 C, the deli masses would do well to bundle up. Of course, it could have been even more frosty in line had the Schwartz’s owners — Céline Dion, Paul and Chris-Ann Nakis and Paul Sara — stuck to the exact anniversary date. Original owner Reuben Schwartz, a Romanian immigrant, opened the deli on Dec. 31, 1928. Not the most obvious time of year to open a restaurant in Montreal: in the dead of winter, during the holiday season and, oh yeah, the day before the year of the Great Depression. But Reuben Schwartz clearly defied the odds. Schwartz’s is one of the granddaddies of Montreal restaurants. The only eateries older — and still going — are the Montreal Pool Room, founded in 1912, and Old Montreal’s L’Auberge Saint-Gabriel, started in 1754. In June, Schwartz’s held a citywide scavenger hunt, the Great Deli Race, in which 25 teams of four participated. The winning players — Milena Reis Augusto, Karine and Marlette Ferreira and Linita Sousa — have picked up four first-class airplane tickets to Las Vegas as well as fivestar hotel accommodations and tickets to Dion’s show at Caesars Palace.