In preparation to the second edition of the Shut Up and Eat Food Face-off, a while ago, I informally polled both my Facebook page and Twitter and asked you guys which is the “definitive” and your favourite “Montreal smoked meat”. The front runner was obviously the famous mainstay on St. Laurent, Schwartz’s delicatessen, followed by random shouts of The Main, and Smokemeat Pete. Montrealers take their smoked meat seriously, and this goes without saying. When asked what Montrealers are passionate about, the things that come to mind are hockey, poutine, bagels, smoked meat and the amount of cleavage Mutsumi Takehashi is showing at 6pm. Okay, maybe not that last one, cos I don’t think about that either. The idea was brewing in my head for a while now; get the “best” smoked meats all in one place, have a bunch of people taste them all at the same time, and find definitively which is the superior meat.
I was planning a welcome back BBQ (if you’re been following the count, it would be #9 in the past three months) for a buddy of mine who just recently returned safe and sound from a tour in Afghanistan. We all take turns hosting parties every summer, and as a result of this circumstance, I told him on the the eve of his deployment that I’ll wait for him to get back to have my BBQ, so he won’t miss out on any of the gluttonous grilling gluttony… little did he know he would get back from the war and find himself in another one; The war of SMOKED MEAT.