Holy Smokes!

Had a special treat recently. A smoked meat sandwich and poutine from Caplansky’s. It was one of the last before they temporarily close and move to a new location Sep 1. Caplansky’s got to be quite well known around the city for the year that it’s been open. And its popularity has spawned about a million reviews, a billion blogs and certainly over a gazillion word of mouth praises. Go ahead, Google “Caplansky’s review” and the Google page counter on the bottom won’t be able to keep up.

Therefore, I’m not going to bore you with another review. Because, you don’t need me to tell you that the smoked meat is one-of-a-kind, tender, melt-in-your-mouth goodness that has a smokey flavour heavier even than any BBQ shop in Toronto. I certainly don’t need to mention that it compares favourably to the best smoked meat shops in the world, such as Katz’s and Shwartz’s. And it’s absolutely clear to everyone by now that this is the only true, authentic, purely home-made smoked meat in the city worth trying. Naturally, my sandwich was damn good. And the smoked meat poutine was like eating the same damn good sandwich, but with fries instead of the bread and with an extra healthy dose of half-melted cheese curds.

Instead of a review, this blog is about the strive to perfection. I’ve noticed that way too many restaurants, rather than trying to get better every day, just fall into the funk of complacency. Caplansky spent a significant amount of time perfecting his sandwich. He developed his own brine recipe. Determined how long the meet needs to brine for. Experimented countless hours with the amount of smoke, the length of time to smoke, the type of wood to use, and the perfect smoking temperature. Considering the meat smokes for roughly 14 hours at a low temperature (around 220 degrees), you can imagine how much of a difference 5 degrees can make. And believe me, from someone who’s attempted smoking meat, it takes a phenomenal amount of skill and experience to get the routine right, sandwich after sandwich, day after day. And throughout the year, the recipe has been tweaked. The fries have become tastier and crispier. And the meat has become more consistent.

That’s not say that it’s always perfect. It’s not a cookie cutter cold cut sandwich that comes pre-packaged and is assembled as you wait. Everything is made from scratch, so sometimes it’s a little different than other times. One time, it was… well, there’s no other way to put it… just not good. It was difficult to bite through, not the supple meat that we were used to. So we called the man behind the smoker. He tried the meat himself, apologized and gave us a credit for the entire order, fries and all. But even more surprisingly, he refused customers for several hours, refusing to serve food that wasn’t to his liking. That’s obviously someone that takes pride in what he does. And there are other places that do the same. But for every one that takes pride in their food, there are ten that are there to simply earn a buck. If you care about who earns your well-earned money, then take note of what you’re buying and make sure you pay for what’s worth paying for. We are trying to do our part to help by candidly providing our feedback in this blog. And that’s why my $7 will always find it’s way to a Caplansky’s type establishment. (No, it’s not on Bay St., but they’re great at large group orders if you have someone that can pick them up on occasion.)