Mile End Sandwich

In our continuing World Eats quest, M and I continued our trek through Canada by visiting Mile End Sandwich to partake in their Canadian smoked meats and that most Canadian gutbomb, poutine. We visited twice so as to try more food options before we wrote this review, but the two constants were the smoked meat sandwich and the poutine. We did, however, learn valuable lessons about eating here during our first visit that we used in our second visit.

In our first visit we ordered the smoked meat sandwich, the Beauty, and an order of poutine.

Smoked Meat Sandwich

The smoked meat sandwich was the main reason we visited and one of their specialties. It's also a representative dish for Montreal's cuisine. Prior to Hurricane Sandy, Mile End had its own kitchen in which they smoked all of their own meat. The kitchen was damaged and flooded pretty badly, and neither of us is sure if it's back up and running. Such as it is, the smoked meat was amazing. I had never had real pastrami (which Montreal-style smoked meat is most similar to) before moving to NYC, and I've done what I can to eat as much salty, smoky meat as I can to make up for that fact.

Mile End's offering is a little saltier than most pastrami that I've had, but it was still extremely delicious. The meat had the right amount of fattiness and grease to give it a rich, soft texture. The mustard added a bit of spice and sourness to balance out the salt. It was a delicious sandwich and one that we were looking forward to trying again.

The Beauty

The Beauty is a Montreal-style bagel stuffed with lox and cream cheese, red onions, tomato, and capers. From what I could tell, Montreal-style bagels are wonderfully soft and chewy while having a nice bite with the crusty, sesame seed covered exterior. The lox, similar to the smoked meat, was a little on the salty side, but M and I are suckers when it comes to lox and cream cheese on a bagel, and we certainly enjoyed this one. The bagel really makes this menu item special.

 Poutine

Poutine is a Canadian delicacy consisting of french fries covered with cheese curds and then smothered in brown gravy. (You may remember our poutine stop in Saint John, but these were better.) It's a heavy side dish that fills you up. The fries are standard thick cut fries, but adding the squeaky cheese curds and brown gravy made this a dish to remember. As delicious as it was, M and I ran into a serious problem. Now, the issue we had isn't that the poutine tasted bad, it was just too much food. The "side order" is probably enough to feed at least 4 people. Sadly there were just two of us, but we somehow still finished the whole meal.

Fatty feast!

After a few months when we finally digested all of the poutine we had ordered, we decided to go back to refresh our memory on some of the food we tried the first time while also trying something new. We repeated the smoked meat sandwich, but this time we were smart and did the "combo meal" option that came with pickles and a single-person serving size of poutine. We also ordered the chicken salad sandwich as our second dish. For this part of the review, I won't go back into a review of the smoked meat because it was really tasty but also the same as the first time.

Chicken Salad Sandwich

The chicken salad sandwich comes with gribenes (chicken cracklins), pickled peppers, and new pickles all on challah bread. The chicken salad itself was very light. It wasn't heavily laden with mayonnaise like most chicken salads you'll find in regular delis, and the vegetables were very fresh. The gribenes added some crunch to the sandwich as well as a little extra salt. M wasn't a huge fan of the cracklins and thought the sandwich would be better without them, but I disagree. I mean, who doesn't like cracklin?

Manageable Poutine Size

The combo meal for the sandwich comes with a MUCH more shareable size of poutine for two people. It was just as tasty as the monster sized variant we first got, and this one came with pickles! I like pickles a lot so this made me happy. I think as a combo, the poutine is still too much for just one person, but it's a good amount for two people.

Mile End was a restaurant we had wanted to try ever since they opened in 2009, and the opening of Mile End Sandwich which was so much closer made it that much easier for us. It was everything we expected it to be and more, and we're definitely looking forward to our next visit.