Celebrating Jewish cuisine
New exhibit demonstrates how restaurants preserved culture
It’s hard to believe corned beef on rye was once exotic.
But it was — at least in 1900 — when Toronto’s first Jewish restaurant opened.
Sam and Sara Harris ran Harris Delicatessen adjacent to St. John’s Ward, an immigrant slum later razed to build Nathan Phillips Square.
The Yiddish-speaking Harrises imported kosher smoked meat from Chicago, given the lack of local products.
But they prospered — and they got Torontonians hooked on smoked meat. By 1946, the city had more than 100 delicatessens, two-thirds of which were owned by non-Jews.
The history of Toronto’s Jewish restaurants is a new exhibit at Beth Tzedec Congregation’s Rueben & Helene Dennis Museum.
From Latkes to Laffas opens Wednesday at 1700 Bathurst St. It shows, through archival photos and evocative memorabilia, how these restaurants have both preserved and transmitted Jewish culture.
“No one has done this in Toronto,” says exhibit curator Gella Rothstein during a walk-through last week.
The installation starts in a downstairs hallway with photos of the Ward, where Eastern European Jews settled; Rothstein points out her grandmother Cyril (Tsirl) Goldhar in a 1907 image.
When the community shifted to Kensington Market in the 1920, delis such as Shopsy’s and Switzer’s opened. There gathered diners of every class in what Toronto writer Ben Kayfetz called “kibbitzerias,” places to eat and schmooze. (And sing for their supper. Switzer’s coowner Eric Solomon once let a customer perform “Hava Nagila” in exchange for a corned beef sandwich: “Everyone was singing and clapping with her, so of course we fed her. The best was when she asked if the pickle was extra and she started to sing and dance again.”)
Restaurants kept families together — three generations of the Ladovsky family have run United Bakers Dairy Restaurant since 1912 — or tore them apart, like the Goldenberg brothers, who competed across the street from each other for decades.
Upstairs, the exhibit continues with cabinets of memorabilia. There’s a Star of David light fixture from the King David Room of the Town House restaurant on Eglinton Ave. W.
From ’60s hot spot the Noshery, a pinkstriped menu lists “kishka à la Tony” ($1.50), a meatless sausage possibly named for the cook, venture exhibit organizers. The menu calls the $2.50 Congo latke a “meshigina” (Yiddish for crazy) combo of deli, potato pancakes and mustard. The menu cover says, “What foods these morsels be.”
A black-and-white photo of sorority sisters dining out sparks memories for museum curator Dorion Liebgott. She spent her teen Saturday nights with her girlfriends at the now-closed Coleman’s Deli on Bathurst St., ordering cherry Cokes, onion rings and fries with gravy.
“We loved it,” she says.
Artist Ian Leventhal, whose grandparents met at Kosher Quality restaurant in the 1940s, painted six panels for the exhibit. They show the Jewish community’s migration through the city, from the Ward and Kensington to Forest Hill, Lawrence Ave. W., Wilson Ave. and Thornhill.
“Of course, it’s a wonderful nostalgic ride for me personally as I can say I experienced most of what I depicted,” Leventhal says in an email.
Kosher restaurants, meanwhile, opened by the dozens since the defunct Sova on Bathurst St. (singing waiters!) dominated the market in 1961. Mideastern laffa flatbreads, not bagels, are the go-to carb and healthy Israeli fare dominates.
I wonder: Do restaurants have to be kosher to be Jewish?
“Not at all,” says Rabbi Jordan Helfman of Holy Blossom Temple.
He points to United Bakers, which separates milk from meat but doesn’t meet kosher criteria because it is open on Saturdays, the Jewish Sabbath.
“Many Yiddishe restaurants operate without following the laws of kashruth (religious dietary laws). The Carnegie Deli in New York City isn’t kosher,” Helfman says. A $25 symposium on Heymish & Hip: Eating Jewish in Toronto takes place at Beth Tzedec on Oct. 19, moderated by author David Sax.
The exhibit runs until March 30, 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. or when the synagogue is open. apataki@thestar.ca, @amypataki