We’re changing our hours a little until we move:
Opening at 11am daily
Closing at 9pm nightly and 8pm on Sunday and Monday.

We will be closed on Canada Day

A few weeks ago I finally got to see Paul Marks, an Orthopedic surgeon who kept me waiting 13 months for an appointment.  The meeting itself was a bit of a letdown (I got a lecture on the state of the health care system in Ontario and eHealth Ontario in particular) however he booked me for surgery to clean up my knee a couple of weeks from now.  The recovery shouldn’t be too long so I expect to be up and at ‘em in time for the new store opening in August.  In the meantime, I figure it’ll be hard for me to climb the stairs at the Monarch so I’ll spend my time supervising the reno.

Believe it or not, the reno is the bright spot in an otherwise painful existence at the moment.  Beyond my knee I’ve developed this ache in my neck and back that I’m pretty sure is stress related.  I’ve been for two massages, two chiropractic appointments, accupuncture and regular old western medicine c/o my doctor.  Nothing seems to work and the pain is great enough that I haven’t had a decent night’s sleep in over a month (hence sitting here at 3 am kvetching to anyone who will listen).

Stress?  What do I have to feel stress over right?  (lol) I am making the critical leap for this business from a small success to something more substantial and the risk is obvious.  Can I maintain the high level of quality and service with a bigger menu in the new space?   Will people continue to support us the way they have at the Monarch?  Obviously, time will tell, but these are the thoughts that preoccupy me.  

At the same time, the move feels “beshert” – meant to be.  The space is two doors over from my great-grandfather Ben Caplan’s hardware store and down the street from my other great-grandparent’s store called Robert’s 5 and Dime.  I was unaware of this last connection until my cousins Bobby and Mark Goodman came into the deli with their spouses Shelley and Janet, respectively.  It always gives me great pleasure to have my family around and Bobby in particular filled in some blanks for me.  

I’ve mentioned previously that, growing up, my immediate family was never very warm to the idea of my owning a restaurant.  I always felt that their attitude stemmed from my grandmother’s experience as a young women.  In her last days she told me she was courted by a young man whose family owned a very successful restaurant called the “Romanian Grill”.  However, when he would call on her, my Nana’s father would announce “Thelma, that waiter is here to see you.”  It was made clear to her that such a man was not good enough for her and she broke off the relationship.  I came to believe that this unfortunate bias was passed on to me and struggled against it until recently.

Interestingly, that “waiter’s” son is Bobby’s best friend and Bobby confirmed the story and added some heartbreaking details.  He told me that when the man passed away, he still had jewelry that he had bought for my grandmother and wanted her to have.  Bobby and Shelley told me “they were in love” and knowing that my Nana’s marriage to my Papa wasn’t a very happy one, this story serves as a reminder that sometimes our parents are wrong.  While they may think they know what’s best for us, its far more important that we live our own lives – come what may.

I’m going to try get a few hours sleep.

I write a lot about the generations that came before but tonight I want to send a shout out to the next generation. Today my nephew Benjamin was called to the torah as a bar mitzvah. If Pride is the first and worst of the seven deadly sins then call me guilty because I have nothing but pride for this young man.

Interestingly, my nephew is named for my great grandfather who was the first of our family to come to Canada. Like our forbearer, Ben faces many challenges in his life. And like his namesake Ben’s enormous capacity for loving kindness, his tenacity and the support of his family will see him through.

Ben, thank you for the joy you gave me today and tonight. You’ve taught me that anything is possible if you work hard and never give up. You are a credit to your family and your community and I’m proud to be your uncle. If I should ever be lucky enough to have a child, I’d like him to be just like you and if not then I’ll just have to spend more time with you.

Happy Birthday to me! It’s past midnight and like any self-respecting one year old, I couldn’t wait to start celebrating. Yes, beloved readers, exactly one year ago tonight I was about to open “Caplansky’s at the Monarch”. I didn’t have the chutspah to call it a Deli – Steven Davey was the first to coin that phrase a few weeks later in his “Best Sandwiches” issue. I just wanted a place to serve sandwiches. In fact, my original business plan said I’d serve 2 sandwiches a day for the first three months. Seriously.

I remember this time one year ago vividly: I was a bundle of nerves trying to remember all the things I had to do the next morning. If I did sleep, I didn’t sleep much because I got to the Monarch at 6 am so I could smoke a second batch of meat that would be ready for dinner service. I walked into the kitchen, loaded the smoker and flipped the switch. Nothing. I toggled the switch up and back. Nothing. Plugged, unplugged and plugged again. Nothing nothing and nothing. I started hitting it and even less happened. Clearly, Murphy is also an anti-Semite.

Charlotte, my gf at the time saved the day by renting a car and driving up to Bass Pro Outlet and bought me another smoker. She also talked them into exchanging my broken one even though I hadn’t bought there so by the end of the day I had two. This didn’t even matter because thanks to David Sax my entire meat supply for the week was eaten by Globe and Mail readers. Smoker or not – I hadn’t cured enough meat.

On that day the lovely Jessica Roher was serving customers and uber vegan (and lovely) Megan Russell was helping me in the kitchen. I first hired Jessica as a server at the Magic Oven where I was a manager. Megan came there looking for a job in a vegan friendly environment and ended up… well you know where she ended up. Incidentally, Megan is still with me which tells me that either I am not impossible to work for or she is a saint. If you know either of us you’ll know that the truth lies towards the latter.

The rest of my story is pretty well known because of the frankly disproportionate amount of press coverage I’ve garnered. Don’t get me wrong: I deeply appreciate every word that has been written. Love me or hate me they care enough to write. All of that press and more importantly the word-of-mouth has driven my business right out of the Monarch and into my own Delicatessen. I’m so busy now with trying to open on time and on budget that I had neglected to plan anything special for tomorrow until young Mr. Sax reminded me that tomorrow is worth celebrating.

“Pain is a part of life” the Buddha is reported to have said. And let’s be clear: I have experienced real pain in my 40 years. Not the physical stuff that heals and may leave scars. I know that pain too but the its the other kind, the emotional pain of betrayal and rejection that I know all too well. So when life gives us the opportunity to celebrate then celebrate we must.

With an offer of free ice cream, balloons and cheap beer I invite you to stop by and wish me “mazel tov”. Mostly I want you to let me thank you for your support. When you’ve felt cold and alone, when you’ve lived in your car and had no where to go, its really easy to feel grateful for the love I’ve gotten from this city.

Just over a year ago I named myself Caplansky and in doing so I found my place in this world and that place is right here at home. I make sandwiches – simple as that. Maybe its more than that… a year ago I was a sandwich maker and now I’m a Deli Man. My business may succeed and it may fail. Win or lose: I love you, Toronto and I know you love me too.

I opened in the Monarch because I was broke and it was cheap.  Yes, I love the room but given my education and experience I believed it was an awful place to open.  You know the saying: “what are the three most important things in the restaurant business? Location, location, location”.  So what do I do? I open a Jewish Deli on the second floor of a side street dive bar – in an Italian neighborhood. No walk by.  No parking.  No signage (at first).  Crazy?  Many would say so.  But I was hungry for smoked meat and unable to afford a typical storefront resto.  What’s a Jew to do? You know what I did and in doing what I did I proved that playing by the rules isn’t always a recipe for success.  ”Sometimes you just have to say: what the fuck” (Risky Business – 1983). 

Now, almost exactly one year later, we’re moving into exactly the kind of space I would have moved into if I could have afforded it.  The question is: what’s to do with the Monarch.  The owners think I’d be crazy to leave (although they also said I was crazy to open there).  Customers?  You are a fickle lot.  In the first six months I caught tonnes of flack over the “dingy, dank, disgusting” – ness of the Monarch.  I took it in stride.  After all, what could I do?  I owed my livelihood to this place and while I tried not to let on, working there has pushed me to my limits and beyond.

I fixed every piece of equipment – twice.  I carried thousands of pounds of meat (and soup and sacks of potatoes) up and down those long staircases from the basement to the smoker and down again on a knee that barely functions and shoulders that ache nightly.  I put up with (but didn’t necessarily accede to) the outrageous and unreasonable demands of multiple landlords.  I endured anti-Semitic venom from a neighbor who seems to hate almost everyone in the area (including my afore-mentioned landlords).  And I collected a stack of parking tickets that could wallpaper the entire basement beer cooler.

Eternal romantic that I am, my love for the place endures: the dark wood, the blue leather, the Leafs memorabilia on the walls and the smell of stag parties long forgotten.  I even love the characters at the bar.  But I think what I love most is that the Monarch is a Toronto landmark and being there makes me feel a part of something bigger than myself.  For generations the place has been somewhere you had to seek out, had to know about.  You’d walk by that door your entire life if someone didn’t tell you that there’s a nice place upstairs to sit and hide from your troubles for a few hours.

And while I was once certain I’d move everything and everyone with me to 356 College (locks, stock and bagels) I have heard your pleas to maintain a presence in the Monarch. My (zen) dilemma surrounds the issue of quality. The toughest thing in my business is finding great people to help me serve my customers the best food possible.  I’ve been blessed to have found exceptional people willing to work long, hard hours and I’ll need every one of them to open and operate the new place.  In fact, the staff will likely triple.  So who will operate the Monarch?  And what happens if there’s a problem because there WILL be problems. Compressors will blow, people will be sick, pipes will burst, deliveries will be wrong and I will be called upon to fix this stuff.

So, dear readers, as Mick Jones of The Clash used to say: should I stay or should I go?  And try to look at this from my perspective: if it were an easy thing to operate a successful restaurant at the Monarch someone would have done it before me.  In fact, someone did do it before me: a little old Italian lady whose customers still rave about her tomato sauce and pasta 20 years later.  We may make it look easy (awwww, shucks) but what we do is far from easy.  My belief is that opening and operating 356 College will take everything I’ve got.  Don’t get me wrong: I’m ready.  Like John Irving’s Owen Meany character, the events of my life have prepared me for this challenge.    

Too many pop references for you?  I must be channelling Dennis Miller. Ohhh, thats another one.  Well, excuuuuuse me!  The kid’s on fire.  Shwing. I’ll stop now.