It can be argued that to truly experience good food, you’ve got to travel. And even if you’re a local, you should make it a point to explore your own backyard.
In Montreal, there are hidden gems and unsung heroes in every corner of the island, often overlooked for more central institutions and trendy neighbourhoods.
Photograph: Audrey-Ève Beauchamp / @audreyeve.beauchamp
Philip Vavaro is one of those unsung heroes: As the owner-operator of Delibee’s, a smoked meat restaurant that has been in Pointe-Claire since 1999, he admits that Montrealers can have trouble finding the place. Its compact, 24-seat address can slip into the background of the street as it shares a wall with the Mayfair Tavern that Vavaro purchased in 2008, its unassuming façade belying the craftsmanship of the pitmaster inside.
Down to the bone
As iconic as the greatest poutine and bagels can be, Montreal’s smoked meat holds its own special place in the arteries of the city. Despite that stature, there aren’t many making this delicacy the way they used to.
“The process is the small-scale way people used to do it in the old days,” Varvaro explains. “It’s traditional. Delibee’s is small, so I can afford to keep that quality intact. I only have a certain size smoker, so I can only produce so much, but that’s OK.”
Photograph: Audrey-Ève Beauchamp / @audreyeve.beauchamp
Varvaro, who grew up in the deli business under his father and the landmark smoked meat institution The Main, worked since he was a teenager alongside their family of eight. When he wasn’t washing dishes or carrying 70 pounds of meat at a time up and down stairs, he was meeting Leonard Cohen and a then-teenage Céline Dion.
“I just wanted to fool around when I was young. I wasn’t too crazy about working in a restaurant. My father gave me the worst jobs — everything nobody wanted to do,” Varvaro laughs. “That’s how I learned everything, and in the end, it was a good thing.”
Photograph: Audrey-Ève Beauchamp / @audreyeve.beauchamp
From start to sandwich
Varvaro’s smoked meat is food worth travelling for because its taste comes from the most painstaking ingredient of all: time.
Working with Albertan briskets, his craft involves juggling the variables of brining, which spices to use, the length of the smoke, mixtures of applewood and maple, and temperatures. Then there’s steaming according to how soft or tough the meat is. It’s an uncompromising process that yields only to Varvaro’s own experimentation and sense of play. No two briskets, he says, are ever exactly the same.
Photograph: Audrey-Ève Beauchamp / @audreyeve.beauchamp
“There are so many little things. Most people wouldn’t notice the small changes, but I can taste the difference,” he says.
All told, each slice of smoked meat eaten here — or next door at the Mayfair, where it’s handed to the bar through a trap door of sorts — takes upwards of a week to create.
Then there’s the time people spend on the road to get here, and the amount of time customers have spent enjoying it since he opened shop.
“When I have an elderly person come in, and they know what smoked meat is — they’ve been around when the smoked meat was really smoked, you know? They say, ‘This is real smoked meat. I remember this.’ That, to me, is the best compliment because it tells me I’m doing it the right way,” Varvaro recalls.
“That makes me proud of what I do, and I like to do it even more because I’m proud of it.”
How to build an institution
Building Delibee’s wasn’t without its fair share of hardships and hard times, hours put in to reach the status it has now. It’s a part of the Pointe-Claire fabric and community, even if he had to go against the grain to do it.
“You’ve got to do what’s in your heart and follow what you feel. For me, to run a restaurant, there’s a bunch of rules set—selling and buying at a certain price, managing everything a certain way,” Varvaro says.
“But I didn’t care about the price, really. I figure if you’re coming into the restaurant, you’re coming into my house. If you’re coming into my house, I’m going to feed you the way I would a guest.”
It’s a personable approach that’s paid off with deep roots and deeper admiration. The real ones know: Varvaro’s smoked meat is right up there in the echelons of Montreal’s great culinary history, alongside freshly baked bagels and the unmistakable comfort of a great poutine.
