Of course, companies kept churning out every iteration of sugar-bomb cereal, but those were now winked at as “part of this complete breakfast.” You wouldn’t just serve your children Pop Tarts Crunch by itself, but throw in some fruit, orange juice, milk and maybe eggs, and it’s a perfectly fine component to include. The Fannie Farmer breakfast resurfaced.

Cereal’s advertising campaigns still attempt to address these individual issues. If you’re concerned about dirtying a bowl, you can buy disposable, single-serving cereal packs. If you’re worried about sugar content, Lucky Charms advertises its whole grains and vitamins, and Corn Pops says it only has “a touch of sweetness.” Concerned that your healthy cereal will be bland and flavorless? Try Honey Bunches of Oats filled with vanilla yogurt clusters and chocolate bits. Wheaties says you should pair it with chocolate milk, perhaps in hopes that the combination will liven up a bowl of plain grain flakes. It’s supposed to be filling, nutritious, tasty and, most of all, convenient. It’s in crisis mode, back to fighting for space on the shelf, trying to convince you it’s Fannie Farmer’s five courses rolled into one.

Then, The Nutrition and Labeling and Education Act of 1990 passed, ensuring that all products acquired the now-familiar list of “Nutrition Facts”; it became a lot easier to see just what your cereal had to offer. According to NPR, cereal consumption peaked in 1996 and has been on a steady decline ever since. Nicholas Fereday, a food investment analyst, told The New York Times that it’s been “a death by a thousand cuts,” affected by everything from declining birth rates (fewer children, cereal’s biggest consumers) to changing tastes to increased gluten intolerance. About 18% of American’s don’t even eat breakfast, up from 6% in 1977, and for those that do, they’re increasingly turning to the wider variety of options available, from oatmeal to eggs to granola bars to fast food. Harry Balzer, a food researcher, told NPR, “We keep looking for what’s the most convenient way to take care of that 12 minutes that we have to eat in the morning time…What’s the easiest way to do that? And a bowl of cereal—you got to dirty a bowl. You got to dirty a spoon. You got to clean that stuff.”

In the Americas, Rabinovitch explains, Romanian cooks switched their pastramă meat from mutton or pork to beef. Kosher Jews, who made up the majority of Romanian immigrants, could not eat pork, and beef was much more readily available in the United States than it was in Eastern Europe, especially as the meat industry mechanized during the 20th century.

Sietsema agrees with this take but is quick to point out the historical problem: “What Jews brought with them from Romania bears no resemblance to pastrami. So how did they come up with pastrami? That’s a real mystery.”

The answer, he suspects, is the cross-cultural diffusion that so characterized Jewish ghettos in 19th century North America, where immigrants from a dozen European countries suddenly became neighbors. “There was a lot more swapping around of ideas between Jewish communities around the country and around the world than one might suspect.” Almost every culture in Europe smokes something—ham, cheese, beer—and any combination of them may be responsible for the smoked meat and pastrami we know today.

Is that pastrami, or is it smoked meat? We went on a mission to find the difference. In the Jewish deli world, pastrami is king. Except for where it’s not.

Take a trip to Canada, particularly Montreal, and you’ll find a whole different animal: smoked meat.

Sure, it looks a lot like pastrami, and it tastes pretty similar, and the general recipe of cured, smoked, and steamed fatty beef is more or less the same. But go ahead, tell that to the Jewish deli cognoscenti. See how that goes over.

What exactly are pastrami and smoked meat? Should one of them win the North American deli crown? And what makes them different?

I spoke with Eater’s Robert Sietsema, who in 2009 wrote an article for Gourmet about the war of the rosy meats. “Good luck!” he said of the assignment, before describing smoked meat as “darker red, greasier, and less smoky.” The catch? His visit to Schwartz’s, Montreal’s most famous smoked meat slinger, where he found the smoked meat “smokier and richer” than New York pastrami.

David Sax, the Toronto-based food journalist and author of Save the Deli (and most recently The Tastemakers, an analysis of food trends), traces their origins to a Romanian product called pastramă, a thinly sliced cold smoked (read: not cooked) cured meat that’s traditionally made of mutton or pork and rubbed with spices like coriander, pepper, and paprika. (In Turkey, a similar product called pastırma is made with beef.)

“The origin of the word is Turkish,” explains Lara Rabinovitch, a Los Angeles-based food journalist and self-styled “doctor of pastrami” with a PhD from NYU in modern Jewish history. “Romania was part of the Ottoman Empire, and if you look up the word ‘pastırma’ in Turkish, the word bastır means ‘to press’ or ‘to cure.’ And it’s the same origin of the word in Romanian.”

Curing spices on a white paper towel.
Curing spices. Laura Togut
Pastramă is more like ham than pastrami, but it was popular among Jews who brought it to the New World in the 19th century, the bulk of whom settled in New York and Montreal. Early proto-pastrami was sold in Romanian delis in both cities and over time transformed into the two products we know today.

This story, I realized, is going to be harder than I thought.

Where do Pastrami and Smoked Meat Come From?
Overhead photo of Turkish-style pastırma on white serving plate.
Turkish-style pastırma, the great grandaddy of pastrami.
Let’s take a few steps back: where do pastrami and smoked meat come from? How did they become fixtures of the Jewish deli pantheon?

Caplansky noted one key difference between his smoked meat and Schwartz’s. “Schwartz’s doesn’t wood smoke their meat. Montreal banned wood smoking in restaurants many, many years ago. So Schwartz’s use an old electric smoker and the smoke isn’t the same part of the flavor profile.” Silva confirms this claim—Schwartz’s hasn’t wood smoked their meat for nearly 50 years.

Caplansky uses a wood smoker to produce what he proudly calls “Toronto smoked meat.” But even an electric smoker can elicit some smoky flavor. Sax and Sietsema, who both consider Schwartz’s smoked meat plenty smoky, point out how a brisket’s rendering fat produces its own smoke, flavoring the meat in its own way.

Schwartz’s begins their smoked meat by marinating raw brisket with a secret blend of spices for 10 to 12 days. They smoke the brisket for eight to nine hours and steam them for another three before slicing them by hand and serving them on rye bread with mustard. As Silva put it, “by being cheap, [Schwartz] created something that we still do the same way!” Today, Schwartz’s is synonymous with smoked meat, and is a Montreal institution, beloved by Anglophones and Francophones alike.

“The Montreal product, while terrific, is different than ours,” explains Zane Caplansky, owner of Caplansky’s, which since 2009 has led a resurgence of Toronto’s once dying deli culture. “I guess I made a slightly odd choice when I decided to call what I was doing ‘smoked meat’ instead of the more common Toronto term, ‘pastrami,’ and that, I think from a marketing perspective, I was looking to attract those people that David Sax refers to: the expatriate Montrealers.”

Around the turn of the 20th century, Jews started to leave New York, New Jersey, and Quebec for cities farther west, and they took their pastrami with them. While significant Jewish populations already existed around Canada, many Jews and other Anglophones left Montreal in the 1970s as the sovereignty movement, which aimed to separate Quebec from Canada and form an independent Francophone state, redefined Québécois society. When expatriate Montreal Jews struggled to find smoked meat in Toronto and elsewhere, they made their own. Today you can find smoked meat across Canada (though it’s sometimes called pastrami!), and the U.S.’s pastrami tradition survives on both coasts.

The Hard Differences
Graph showing different cuts of beef.
The way Sax sees it, the main differences between pastrami and smoked meat come down to the cut of beef and the spice rub it’s coated with.

“Pastrami in the United States is almost always made with navel, a cut similar to belly, or what you would make bacon out of on a pig.

Navel and brisket were once some of the cheapest cuts on a cow, but these days their prices have risen much like short ribs and oxtail. So if you step outside the shrinking world of hardcore Jewish delis you’ll find pastrami made with brisket and cheaper cuts like top round. Boar’s Head makes a top round pastrami that’s much leaner than brisket or navel (they also make a pricier brisket version). While lean pastrami is the worst faux pas for pastrami lovers, it appeals to a broader group of deli meat consumers, and leaner meat is easier to slice into cold cuts.

As for the rub, Sax goes on: “Generally pastrami is just spiced with coriander and black pepper, and often sugar.” But for smoked meat, “there’s really no sugar on the rub. It’s generally black pepper, coriander seed, more garlic, and sometimes mustard seed, bay leaf, and other aromatics.”

So it’s a little bit denser, a lot fattier, and it’s less stringy,” notes Sax. On the other hand, Montreal-style smoked meat comes from brisket, as navel is much harder to find in Canada because of its British beef cut tradition. “Smoked meat made from brisket can be stringier and a lot softer if it’s steamed right. [Brisket’s] not fattier throughout the cut, but it has a larger cap of fat, and it has a stringier texture, more fibrous. American-style pastrami is more marbled with fat and has a denser texture.”

In Canadian butchery, the cut called brisket comprises parts of the American brisket and navel (combined the two parts are called “whole brisket.”) As such, if you go to a Canadian deli and order fatty, medium, or lean smoked meat, you’ll receive a sandwich with varying amounts of meat from each portion of the whole brisket.

Split image showing both pastrami and smoked meat on white serving plates.
Katz’s pastrami on the left compared to Mile End’s smoked meat.

“People ask me, ‘what’s the most authentic pastrami?’ or ‘when was the first pastrami served?'” Rabinovitch tells me. “And there’s no answer to either of those questions.” Just like pizza and burgers, it’s hard to point to one particular style and say “there, that’s the original.” Besides, chances are the most “authentic” deli sandwich for you is simply the first one that had an impact on your life.

Pastrami on rye at Katz’s deli, against blurred background.
Debating the differences between delis has a way of moving people apart: smoked meat vs. pastrami. Katz’s vs. Langer’s. Old school vs. new wave. But at the end of the day it’s all meat cut from the same cloth, part of a centuries-old story of immigrants preserving tradition while adapting to somewhere new. That’s a sandwich we can all get behind, no matter the particulars.

Rubbing the brisket
After that the briskets are dry cured with a mix of garlic, salt, pink curing salt, and other spices.

The Makings of the Meats
Plate of smoked meat on place mat at Schwartz’s.
Smoked meat plate at Schwartz’s. Aaron Arizpe
As general manager Frank Silva describes, Schwartz’s Deli was founded in Montreal in 1928 by Reuben Schwartz, a Romanian immigrant. Schwartz originally delivered smoked meat by horse and buggy for other wholesalers before realizing he could make a better and cheaper product himself by not spending money on chemical preservatives.

Trimming the brisket
Mile End starts their smoked meat with whole brisket that production chef Josh Sobel trims to maintain consistent fat and juiciness in the end product.

Split image of pastrami in smoker, before and after smoking.
After 12 days, the briskets receive some extra rub before going into a wood smoker for 12 to 14 hours.

Pan of brisket sitting in refrigerator.
The next morning, the smoked briskets are put into the refrigerator, where they stay for a week while the flavors mature. Finally, they’re transported to the restaurants, steamed for one to two hours, hand cut, and served.

We’ve already documented the pastrami-making process at Katz’s, New York’s pastrami top dog. It’s similar to the process at Schwartz’s but with some subtle differences. Katz’s uses navel for pastrami and brisket for corned beef. Both meats are cured, or corned, for about three weeks before the navels are wood-smoked for 48 to 72 hours at very low heat. The rub, which consists of garlic, salt, pepper, and coriander, goes on right before smoking. Afterwards the smoked navels are boiled for several hours, steamed for 30 minutes, and sliced by hand.

Joel Tietolman and Noah Bernamoff of Mile End, posing together.
Joel Tietolman and Noah Bernamoff of Mile End.
Mile End shook up New York’s deli scene in 2010 when Canadian expat Noah Bernamoff and his wife Rae Cohen brought the Montreal deli tradition to Brooklyn. Since then, Mile End’s modern take on traditional Jewish cooking has been a resounding success, the introductory deli to a new generation of New Yorkers. That includes their Montreal-style smoked meat, which is part of a menu that managing partner Joel Tietolman describes as a way “to bring about, in a new way, the old traditions that have kind of faded.”

Pastrami sandwich on white serving plate.
In Los Angeles, a thriving deli culture exists that some, including Sax, believe is even superior to New York’s. Like Katz’s and Schwartz’s, Los Angeles has its stalwarts: Langer’s and Canter’s. As Jacqueline Canter describes, her grandfather, Ben Canter, spurred by the depression, left New Jersey and opened a New York-style deli on the other side of the country. Pioneers like him have ensured that traditional New York-style pastrami extends well beyond New York.

Meat in Review
Sliced meat on cutting board, skewered with carving fork.
At the end of the day, pastrami and smoked meat have more similarities than differences, and there’s plenty of variation among the two products. But some hard differences stand out: pastrami is usually made with dense, fatty navel while smoked meat comes from leaner, stringier brisket. Pastrami is usually brined while smoked meat is dry rubbed with curing salt. Smoked meat spices are a little more intense with a darker flavor profile compared to pastrami’s sweeter spice rub. And smoked meat typically has a darker red hue while pastrami is rosy pink.

Which Is “The Original”?
Technically, Fairmount is the original. It opened in 1919, but on St-Viateur Street (this is where it gets all tricky) by a Russian immigrant named Isadore Shlafman. He later moved his bagely to a bigger cottage space on Fairmount Avenue. All of the signage inside Fairmount alludes to this 1919 birth year, even if it was under a different roof, which gives them more of the first-kid-on-the-block street cred.

St-Viateur opened on St-Viateur Street, where it has stayed, in 1957 by an Eastern European immigrant named Myer Lewkowicz who partnered with Jack Shlafman, the son of the Fairmount owner at the time. (Drama!)

Montreal vs. NYC Bagel
What makes our bagels different from everybody else is that they’re hand-made. New York, I think 90% of the bagels are machine-made. Toronto, they try to copy off us but still haven’t perfected. —Marco Sblano, St-Viateur

Good luck trying to find an everything bagel in Montreal. Instead, the most popular flavor is sesame, and they pour on the seeds real good. While both bagelries sell about 20 flavors total (like poppy seed and cinnamon-raisin) the sesames make up 70 percent of sales.

“The two bageleries are only a few blocks apart so picking one doesn’t usually involve convenience—it’s about loyalties.” Montrealers have a lot of pride in the their bagels. Plus in a French accent, the word just sounds better: bay-gal. Depending on who you ask, “the best” are either from Fairmount or St-Viateur, both of which sell them fresh 24 hours a day. Before touching on the rivalry, let’s define the Montreal bagel.

What’s All the Fuss?
Compared to the New York-style bagel—a bulbous bread monster—these are smaller, less chewy, and sweeter, thanks to some honey or malt syrup. The bagels are hand-rolled then bathe in sweetened boiling water, and finally baked in a big wood-fired oven. Because of the erratic flames inside, some come out a golden shade while others are a snowier white. The oven is a huge factor in the awesomeness. Some cities prohibit wood-burning ovens due to fire hazards, but thankfully Montreal has a loosier-goosier policy.

The rules guiding Canadian whisky, on the other hand, leave plenty of room for interpretation, as Wilson notes. “Unlike with bourbon, the base spirit is often distilled at a very high 180 proof, which creates a more neutral spirit that lacks flavor. It’s then blended with smaller amounts of lower-proof whiskies, and the distillers are allowed to add 9.09 percent of just about anything: rum, brandy, neutral spirits, caramel, or other types of flavoring. Finally, it’s usually bottled at 80 proof, which makes it taste watered-down.”

The result of all this, of course, is a smooth, soft whisky—which, if you’re a novice drinker (as I was back when I valued the stuff sold in those purple bags) or if you want a whisky that doesn’t particularly taste like whisky, is exactly what you’re looking for. While most of the Canadian whiskies I’ve tried in recent years have tasted bland and uninspired, there are a few that are worth seeking out if your tastes run to this milder side of the whisky world.

The St-Viateur vs. Fairmount Rivalry
Is there a difference? The Fairmount bagel is just a smidge sweeter. “When you ask people which they prefer, it’s about a 60-40 split, Fairmount to St-Viateur,” says Montreal food blogger Katerine Rollet. But then again, she is a Fairmount fan (which probably has something to do with her sweet tooth). The two bageleries are only a few blocks apart so picking one doesn’t usually involve convenience—it’s about loyalties.

What starts as a massive sheet of dough gets sliced into a long snake, which gets hand-rolled into many bagel loops. They have bigger holes than the New York version, or at least look bigger due to the smaller size. Tips for Smuggling Them in Luggage
Both places sell the bagels in plastic sleeves (each bag contains six). They can last on their own for six days, in the fridge for ten days, and a few months in the freezer.

I did not report the bagel stowaways in my luggage on my customs forms for fear of them being seized. I tend to lead an honest life but the thought of confiscation pained me too much. Apparently there’s a bagel booth at Dorval International Airport right beside the duty-free shop but I took a little walk on the wild side instead. Montreal bagels make you do ka-ray-zee things.

Wilson writes that Buffalo Trace, maker of many excellent bourbons and other whiskies, recently acquired a large stock of Canadian whisky and launched two brands, Royal Canadian and Caribou Crossing, which have more character than most other spirits in the category.

Canadian whiskies I’ve enjoyed include: Forty Creek, which is made in Ontario by John K. Hall and is an interesting blend of several individually distilled and aged single-grain whiskies; and Alberta Premium (only available in Canada, I believe), one of the few whiskies around made with 100 percent rye and which has considerably more feistiness of flavor than most Canadian spirits.

Canada isn’t a total loss as far as whisky is concerned, but most of the stuff out there leaves a lot to be desired. Are there any Canadian whiskies you’ve found particularly appealing? Tell us about them. For those of us whose early (or recent) drinking memories involve those purple velvet bags that swaddle bottles of Crown Royal, there’s a soft spot for Canadian whisky in our sodden hearts.

But for Jason Wilson at the Washington Post—who counts his own mother as a fan of Canadian whisky in this week’s column, “Canadian whisky: It’s called ‘Brown Vodka’ for a reason”—the charm of this amber spirit from the north has more to do with nostalgia than with quality. Getting right to the point, Wilson states: “Most Canadian whisky (which like Scotch is spelled without the “e”) is just awful.”

I can usually find something worth defending in most spirits, even vodka, but on this point I have to agree with Wilson. With a few exceptions, Canadian whisky tends to occupy the lower strata of the whisky world, and the manufacturers have only themselves to blame. Whiskies such as bourbon, rye and scotch are produced and labeled under clear sets of guidelines, so the consumer knows that a bottle marked “straight bourbon” or “single-malt scotch whisky” is exactly that, without additives or flavorings.

The rules guiding Canadian whisky, on the other hand, leave plenty of room for interpretation, as Wilson notes. “Unlike with bourbon, the base spirit is often distilled at a very high 180 proof, which creates a more neutral spirit that lacks flavor. It’s then blended with smaller amounts of lower-proof whiskies, and the distillers are allowed to add 9.09 percent of just about anything: rum, brandy, neutral spirits, caramel, or other types of flavoring. Finally, it’s usually bottled at 80 proof, which makes it taste watered-down.”

The result of all this, of course, is a smooth, soft whisky—which, if you’re a novice drinker (as I was back when I valued the stuff sold in those purple bags) or if you want a whisky that doesn’t particularly taste like whisky, is exactly what you’re looking for. While most of the Canadian whiskies I’ve tried in recent years have tasted bland and uninspired, there are a few that are worth seeking out if your tastes run to this milder side of the whisky world.

With the exception of perhaps Twinkies and honey, every food in the world has a half-life. A rate at which it decays toward a slow, asymptotic, petrified or putrefied death. Sometime before it reaches that state of dryness or rot, it passes the W.E. barrier: the point at which it is no longer Worth Eating. For bagels, in particular, that line is close to zero. A good bagel will lose most of its desirable eating qualities within an hour or so of coming out of the oven, and become entirely inedible less than a day later.

But do not despair! For there are ways of casting a lifeline out to bagels that are on the brink of falling over the W.E. barrier. The question is: Which method is the best?

Let’s get one thing straight right off the bat. As a bagel sits in your kitchen over the course of a day or two, two distinct processes are going on: dehydrating and staling. In order to rescue an old bagel, you need to address both.

Proper Storage
Storing your bagel properly is the first step toward ensuring that it’ll reheat. I generally leave most hearty breads in a paper bag or a bread box at room temperature, as the refrigerator can actually hasten staling. A bagel, on the other hand, I actually prefer to keep in the fridge, because we’ll be taking steps to fix staling issues down the line. I store my bagels in a sealed zipper-lock bag in the refrigerator.

For longer-term storage, the freezer is your friend. Wrap individual bagels tightly in aluminum foil (it’s more airtight than plastic wrap) and freeze them for up to a month or so. Any longer, and you’ll run the risk of freezer burn. Let frozen bagels defrost in their foil packages, at room temperature, for a few hours before toasting. That, or maybe I just needed an excuse to have some good New York bagels overnighted to me.

The Advantages: I have a theory that the best way to reheat the vast majority of foods is to emulate the process by which they were cooked to begin with. Got a cold steak? Sear it in a pan again. Cold pizza? Toss it on a preheated stone (or on a preheated skillet, if you’re impatient).

Bagels are cooked by first boiling, then baking, so this reheating method—which I first heard about on Dan Pashman’s awesome podcast, The Sporkful, and which he subsequently detailed in his book, Eat More Better—was especially promising. Dan instructs you to run your bagel under hot water for 30 seconds before placing it in an oven or toaster oven to reheat. We’re in a drought here in California, so instead of using running water, I did the socially responsible thing and instead dunked my bagels in bowls of water. I tried the method with both hot and tepid water, comparing the results side by side with a bagel that had been toasted whole without dipping.