Among the many pieces of advice you’ll get when visiting Montreal will almost certainly be “try the smoked meat”. And if you are going to try the smoked meat, it might as well be from Schwartz’s Deli, a Montreal institution for nearly 90 years. My friend Jo took me there at lunch-time for the full experience.

Having worked up an appetite running up nearby Mont-Royal in the morning, we were well and truly ready to eat by the time we locked our bikes up opposite Schwartz’s. The sight of the lunch-time line-up waiting for a seat led me to say something I now realise would have been a terrible mistake: “maybe we should just get takeaway?” Fortunately, Jo convinced me that the food was only part of the experience, you had to eat it there to get the full experience.

The line moved quicker than I’d expected and soon enough we found ourselves inside, seated on the end of a six seater table beside a family of four already half way through their meals. I was always going to order the smoked meat sandwich since that’s their signature dish. Jo, having been here before, thought she’d order a turkey sandwich but the waiter, perhaps hearing Jo’s Aussie accent and assuming she was a first time visitor like me, wasn’t having any of it. “No no, the turkey is a cold sandwich. You don’t come all this way for the turkey. You want the smoked meat. Here,” he says grabbing the two plates of smoked meat sandwiches he’d only just dropped on the next table over a moment ago “look at this. This is what you want. Delicious smoked meat. So, any drinks?” So that was settled.

With the order placed, I had my first real chance to look around the deli which I would describe as going for the ‘greasy diner look’, and pulling it off. On one side of the shop is the open kitchen where, if you’re seated at the counter, you can watch the chefs do their thing. On the other side is a wall covered in newspaper and magazine articles with references to Schwartz’s from over the years. There’s also some pictures of when Celine Dion last visited a few years ago because it turns out she’s a part owner in the business. The paper menu / place mat also has a long list of celebrities who have eaten here, except I suspect they’re most Canadian celebs, leaving me to ask “Sooo, who are these people?” (Sorry, Canada.)

The sandwiches arrive in no time and I can’t even see the bottom piece of bread under the pile of smoked meat. The top piece of bread has a thin spread of mustard, which it needs to add some moisture to the whole thing. I think if you’re there earlier in the day you’ll have a choice of how fatty you want your cut of meat so you can get just the right amount of fat to hold the meat together and give it moisture. We’re closer to the end of the lunch rush so our meat is pretty lean and just a little dry. The smoked meat is a lot like the corned beef I had growing up but the smoking gives it a bigger flavour. As the whole thing falls to pieces I realise this is going to be a knife and fork affair.

As I take my final mouthful the plate disappears and is soon replaced with the bill. It’s at this point that I realise the family of four beside has been switched out with another party of four at some point during the meal. We’d forgotten to ask our waiter if we could spilt the bill so the woman at the payment counter isn’t impressed when we ask her to but she calculates the split for us anyway. She’s a no-nonsense operator, in part because these high turnover businesses rely on efficiency and partly, I suspect, because she enjoys playing the role in the same mould as those who came before her. We aren’t buying any t-shirts, coffee mugs, tea towels, keyrings or other Schwartz’s memorabilia and so, with that, the full experience is over. We step back outside to see the line isn’t any shorter than when we came in. I guess people here really like their smoked meat.

I enjoyed the sandwich, it had plenty of flavour and was as advertised – smoked meat, on a sandwich – and the dine-in experience was good fun. So, in the style of a triple-j movie review, I’m giving Schwartz’s three and half, out of five, unknown Canadian celebrities.