Les Aliments Felix Mish is Montreal's best-kept secret for smoked meat

Part delicatessen, part Polish grocery, Les Aliments Felix Mish makes use of every centimeter of the tiny Ville-Émard space it has occupied since 1959.

Low-slung aisles of imported jams, spice blends, even snacks like chocolate-enrobed gingerbread pierniczki draw customers in. But what keeps them coming back are homemade sausages and one of the city’s best-kept smoked meat secrets.

Around these parts, ice skating at Campbell Ouest Park in the winter or swimming laps at the Bain Émard pool in the summer are the neighbourhood’s big draws. Both are also one short city block away. Just follow the scent of garlic and smouldering hardwood to Jolicoeur St., and you’ve arrived.

Owner Ron Mish took over the business in 1982, after the death of his father Felix (also one of the original partners in the shuttered downtown deli Saucisses Polonaises).

Where Felix once zigged, Ron zagged. The shop’s original range of classic Polish sausages expanded from kielbasas and head cheese to include spicy, jerky-like kabanos, salami-style ham sausage, and other products that reflected Montreal’s diverse populations.

“Now we do loukaniko with the orange (peel), the real Greek stuff,” Mish says. “And karnatzel, the Kransky sausage made famous on Saint Laurent, even chorizo and hot Mexican sausage.”

These days, Les Aliments Felix Mish offers its international roster of sausages on a rotating basis, which gives Ron, his wife Ivana, and their son Robert a chance to focus on the crown jewel of their business.

Where there’s smoke

Mish’s never-steamed version of smoked meat is unique among its peers. It’s also an unbelievable bargain when you order it as part of an $8.95 sandwich.

Layered in atom-thin slices with an oozy slice of Krolewski (an Emmenthal-esque cheese) and a generous impasto of yellow mustard, each stack appears, at first glance, shorter than you might expect it to be.

If you’re looking for teetering, Pisa-like piles of meat, you’re in the wrong place. Those towering mounds you see elsewhere are plumped up with water.

“Montreal has a lot of good smoked meat. Lots,” Mish says. “But here, we marinate for a full seven to ten days, and we make it tender using only the smokehouse. That’s the difference. Other places will steam it. We don’t have a choice. We don’t have space for a steamer. But it’s much better this way.”

No soggy, moisture-bloated sandwiches here. Undiluted by steam, the flavours of Mish’s smoked meat concentrate down to the purest essence of Angus beef brisket, allspice and black pepper. Even the slices themselves appear different when you peel back the top layer of seedless rye bread bookending your sandwich.

This meat isn’t streaked and marbled in white striations. Instead, with no steam in the equation, each layer of fat melts into a dewy, translucent shimmer.

It’s extraordinary.

Almost famous

Don’t take our word for it. Ask some of the headline acts who’ve played at the Bell Centre. Until recently, Les Aliments Felix Mish was a subcontractor providing backstage deli provisions for artists like AC/DC, Journey, and Ariana Grande.

“The caterer would call me up and say, ‘Ron, I need 350 pounds of sliced smoked meat…thin! So that all the artists could make their sandwiches,” Mish says. “Madonna, Barbra Streisand, and one night that is like a trophy for me: Celine Dion.”

“But it’s just the backstage for the artists. They get the good stuff.”

Montrealers may recall that Dion knows a thing or two about smoked meat. In 1990, Dion and her late husband, Rene Angelil co-founded the Canadian restaurant chain, Nickels Delicatessen. And in 2012, Dion purchased an ownership stake in the legendary Schwartz’s Deli, where smoked meat is a way of life.  

Coincidentally, Mish himself is a musician. He plays bass in a local band that jams in the basement underneath Les Aliments Felix Mish. It’s tight down there, in the low-ceilinged rehearsal space that can just about fit a drum kit and a few amplifiers.

Thankfully, it’s too small to fit a meat steamer.