The great deli debate — Schwartz’s or Bens — was effectively settled when Bens closed in 2006 after 98 years in business. Montreal-style smoked meat, as journalist David Sax explained in his 2009 book Save the Deli, is basically a cross between pastrami and corned beef: a brisket that is spiced according to various family recipes brought over mostly from Romania a century ago, pickled for a week, smoked, and then served in a gravity-defying heap on seedless rye with mustard. Schwartz’s is the biggest name remaining, but other iconic haunts such as the Main Deli Steak House and, a little farther afield in Outremont, Lester’s Deli offer their own subtle variations. “Lester’s is a little creamier than Schwartz’s, and it’s cut with the grain instead of against it,” explains Mélissa Simard, who has been guiding culinary safaris through Jewish Montreal for three years through her company, ‘Round Table Tours. I tried smoked meat sandwiches at all three places, and hoovered them all down with gusto. But it was from Lester’s that I chose to buy a few vacuum-sealed bags to bring back to Toronto with me on the train — no refrigeration or ice required: “If you’re comfortable,” the cashier assured me as I headed for the door, “the smoked meat is comfortable.”

Simard’s tour also wound past some even more stubborn and idiosyncratic holdouts, including Wilensky’s Light Lunch, a diner just down the street from Fairmount Bagel where, in every respect that matters, it’s still 1932. The decor is the same; the wooden stools at the counter are the same; and the Wilensky Special, invented by the current owners’ father, Moe, is still a slab of beef salami and slab of beef baloney wrapped in a bun with a swipe of mustard then grill-pressed into the shape of an English muffin. OK, the price has changed — but $4.09 still seems like a Depression-era bargain, and with a hand-jerked egg cream soda and half-sour pickle on the side, it’s a darn good lunch. “There were tons of these places in the old days,” Sharon Wilensky says, but it’s their dogged adherence to the past that has allowed Wilensky’s to survive — which means that, just like the old days, the Special always comes with mustard and can never be cut in two. “People come in,” she says, “and they want the same thing they had as a kid, when they came in with their dad.”

Of course, as delicious as the illusion might be, it isn’t really 1932 anymore. In the years since the Second World War, Montreal’s Jewish community has continued to evolve, with a significant influx of French-speaking Sephardic Jews from North Africa and the growth of a vibrant Hasidic community. At Fletchers, the culinary space in the Museum of Jewish Montreal, the menu includes new twists on Eastern European classics, such as gefilte fish tacos; but it also has a Moroccan-style salad, and massafan cookies, an ethereal mash-up of almond flour, cardamom and rosewater that is eaten by Iraqi Jews during Passover. “Our goal is to introduce people to the diversity of Jewish food,” says Kat Romanow, a Jewish food historian and the director of food programming at the museum.

The truth is that many of St-Laurent’s iconic establishments are now Jewish in name only. St-Viateur Bagel has been owned by an Italian family since the mid-’90s; Schwartz’s is owned by a consortium that includes Céline Dion. But newer businesses that reflect the city’s changing Jewish population are springing up. At Cheskie’s Heimishe Bakery, a bustling Hasidic business in Mile End, men in dark coats with dangling side-curls line up with neighbourhood foodies for a revelatory bite of Cheskie’s chocolate babka. Then there’s the hip, industrial vibe of Hof Kelsten, where owner and Montrealer Jeff Finkelstein — who trained as a chef at famous restaurants such as El Bulli in Spain — serves up bialys and latkes alongside the lovingly crafted bread he distributes to top restaurants around the city.