Old world Jewish noshes meet a new generation of cooking at Yans Deli

By the time Benji Greenberg decided to leave Joe Beef, he already knew what he wanted to cook: Something closer to home—if not in execution, then at least in spirit.

Yans Deli would decidedly not be another riff on fine dining, nor a redux of the lobster-and-steak era that had, in many ways, defined his seven-year run at the institution. What he had in mind was a new kind of Jewish deli that pulls equally from Romanian countryside recipes, childhood brunch memories, and the kind of ingredient obsession one could expect from someone who’s staged at Single Thread and CUT by Wolfgang Puck.

“It’s food that I know how to cook, food I love to eat,” Benji says. “I just said, fuck it. I’m gonna do it my way.”

That means black and white cookies and ice cream sundaes, but also veal schnitzel with quail eggs and carnotzel. Smoked meats and house-cured fish, but also a dry-aged porterhouse in the deli counter, just because. Instead of a tasting menu, you've got Joel’s Brunch (named for Benji’s dad), who used to spend entire mornings driving around Montreal to assemble the perfect family spread: bagels from one place, deli meats from another, bubka from a third.

“He’d be out all morning just to get it right,” Benji says. “So we built a menu that’s like that—little bit of everything, all on one table.”

A long time coming home

For a chef whose formative meals came from both a brisket-loving Romanian grandmother and a seafood-shucking Jewish grandfather, this kind of cultural crossfade feels natural.

“At Joe Beef, I was already kind of cooking the food I grew up with,” Benji says. “It was lobster and oysters, but also meats, proteins, French sauces. What I’m doing now is different—but it’s still me.”

The inspiration wasn’t purely personal. The closures of places like Montreal Smoked Meat in Pointe-Saint-Charles (now Taglio) made something click.

“Delis are closing—but what’s opening?” Benji says. “I’ve been eating at Snowdon since I was a kid. Schwartz’s, too. It’s part of being Jewish in Montreal—Saturday, Sunday, it was always brunch. And I just started thinking: what if I made my own version?”

The name “Yans” is a nod to Benji’s wife—it was her childhood nickname. But it’s also a signal of something more personal. “I liked how it looked next to the word ‘deli,’” he says. “But really, it’s about family. I want people to walk in and feel like they belong here.”

The culinary and the cultural

Before signing a lease, Benji went to Europe with his father, tracing the culinary roots of Ashkenazi Jewish food through Antwerp, Brasov, Berlin, and beyond.

“I was looking at where the food actually came from—what people were eating in countryside Romania, or in butcher shops in Munich after the war,” he says.

One dish that came out of that research: a leberkäse-style loaf made from chicken instead of the traditional pork and veal: “A lot of Jews worked in butchers back then. When they immigrated to North America, they adapted those recipes to kosher laws. I wanted to bring some of that back.”

That sense of reinterpreted tradition runs through the menu at Yans. While most dishes fall within the comfort food canon—latkes, chopped liver, matzo ball soup—they’re rarely executed by the book. A caviar-topped latke sits beside a party sandwich made with fresh bluefin. The bagels aren’t made in-house (this is Montreal, after all), but the English muffins are.

“I didn’t want to go too far off script,” Benji says. “But I also didn’t want to just copy the old model.”

Deli purists, take note

Located on Ferrier Street just off Décarie, the deli is built for daytime service and designed for families, regulars, and road-trippers alike.

“I wanted to be near the highways,” Benji explains. “We’re thinking a lot about platters, catering, takeout. If you’re heading up north or coming from the West Island, this is a spot you can stop by on the way.”

There’s a parking lot out front, 40–50 seats inside, and football on the TVs every Sunday. The layout is open and informal, but purposeful, and the menu works just as well for a solo nosh as it does for a multi-generational brunch.

The interior was developed in collaboration with ISSASTUDIO, a Montreal design firm that helped translate Benji’s ideas into a tactile space.

“We worked for months just to get it all on paper,” he says.

The result is an environment that balances warmth with whimsy: wood-lined walls, silver-trimmed tables, and pops of personality throughout. Behind the bar, speakers were custom-built to match the space. Lego figurines—Benji’s lifelong fixation—are hidden in plain sight.

On the menu, items are grouped under four headings—foršpays (snacks), nosh (small plates), freshers (larger dishes), and platters—alongside a rotating steak of the day, a few sandwiches, and a handful of sweets.

Most items are available at the counter for takeout. And while Yans is currently open Tuesday to Sunday from 7:30 a.m. to 5 p.m., plans are underway for twice-weekly dinner service, as well as space rentals for private events.

Beverages, too, are treated seriously. Alyssa Shahin, Yans’ general manager and beverage director, has assembled a short but focused cocktail menu using fresh ingredients and housemade blends: a bloody Mary with fresh tomato juice, a breakfast martini made with apricot jam, boozy and non-boozy milkshakes, and a sparkling green apple soda for kids. There’s a modest selection of wine and local beer (including picks from Cacao Régime), and a flexible approach to whatever drink fits the mood.

“I think it’s fun to have a funky cocktail with a bowl of chicken soup,” Benji says.

While some of these offerings may raise eyebrows among deli purists, that’s not really the point. Yans isn’t a museum—it’s not interested in preserving deli culture in amber. If anything, it’s pushing back on what Montreal restaurants too often default to.

“There’s nothing wrong with small plates, seasonal veg, natural wine,” Benji says. “But it feels like a lot of new places are just doing the same thing. I didn’t want to open another version of that.”

Instead, he’s aiming for something louder, warmer, and harder to pin down—something that’s culturally anchored but not beholden to expectations.

“I want people to look in the window and see a big smoked fish platter on one table, a dry-aged steak on another,” he says. “I want it to feel familiar and kind of strange at the same time.”