I remember the first time I walked into a Montreal bagel shop. Unlike bagel shops in the United States, where bins are filled with 10 to 20 different bagel flavors, lists of cream cheese options stretch across the walls, and countertops overflow with cookies and chips, this bagel shop had two options: sesame or poppy. Bagels in Montreal weren’t about inventive flavors or toppings; they were about the simplicity of a traditional, chewy-with-a-slightly-sweet taste-of-honey bagel. The elimination of choice somehow felt particularly special. Each ingredient mattered.
I couldn’t help but think about my experience with other Montreal Jewish foods as I read the cookbook Arthurs: Home of the Nosh. I had never heard of Arthurs, but it didn’t take long for me to learn what a Montreal staple the restaurant has become. And yet, as I read, I began to realize that Arthurs represents a very different side of Montreal Jewish food than the one I had come to know.
If I’m honest, there aren’t many recipes in this cookbook that I would eat, let alone make. I’m a vegetarian, and many of the recipes are meat-based. From classics like a gravlax sandwich and schnitzel to prime rib, meat is represented for just about every occasion. I don’t like cheese or peppers or egg salad, which seem to be key ingredients in the non-meat-focused recipes such as French Fry Chilaquiles, schmears, and Mami’s Cheesecake. (Don’t get me wrong, there are vegetarian recipes in the cookbook; they just are few and far between.)
Yet, I am obsessed with this cookbook. It was an absolute joy to read from cover to cover. It reads almost like a travel narrative: I not only wondered what would happen next but found myself wanting to stop at the restaurant the next time I visit Montreal. This cookbook is meant to be read as much as it is meant to be cooked from. It tells the story of Arthurs, how the owners came to meet and how the restaurant came to be.
Raegan Steinberg and Alex Cohen, the owners of Arthur’s and authors of the cookbook, are unapologetically themselves. They are straightforward with their thoughts on recipes, even using a devil icon to indicate a super-complicated recipe and a green cartoon clock to indicate that a recipe will take a long time to make. This proves important because some of the recipes in the ‘Nosh’ section seem not so noshy…everything takes a long time to make; you can’t exactly grab them on a whim. Their authenticity brings personality to this cookbook in a way other cookbooks often don’t. For instance, you don’t forget who is narrating the story of Arthurs when the footnote says, “Raegan thought this last paragraph was embarrassingly cheesy and needed to be removed completely, but Alex refused,” (page 15).
And this fun energy is kept up throughout the entire book. We see it in the incredibly descriptive anatomy of a sandwich (page 92), which walks readers through every ingredient, how to cook it, and which type of bread or cheese to select. It carries through to the very end of the cookbook, which concludes with a coloring sheet of Raegan and Alex’s family and their relationship to Arthurs.
One thing that intrigued me most about Arthurs is that it represents almost the opposite of what I recall from Montreal. I’ve visited Montreal many times, and through those visits I’ve come to appreciate how visibly Jewish and religious parts of the city’s Jewish community can be. Compared with my experiences in the United States, where conversations about Jewish identity often center around denominations, to me, Montreal has always felt less concerned with those distinctions. Arthurs, however, is not typical Montreal. It shows how every city has its breaks from the norm; for instance, Arthurs uses non-kosher ingredients.
Perhaps most importantly, Raegan and Alex set out to create a restaurant and a cookbook that merged their Jewish backgrounds and felt like home…and this cookbook was heimish. Maybe that is what makes Arthurs so interesting to me: it doesn’t try to recreate the Montreal Jewish food I already knew. It creates its own version of Jewish Montreal, one that is playful, personal, and entirely its own.
This is not your typical cookbook. And that is a good thing. The authors aptly label it ‘a big personality cookbook’ for a reason. You will laugh. And you will also yearn for a Jewish deli the second you finish poring over the pages.