Smoked Meat and Poutine: Check.

Montreal is surprisingly Jewish for a city that's historically been filled with super-devout French Catholics. We have a large Hasidic community in one section of town (smaller than, but comparable to NYC's), and a lot of the city's food bears more similarities to NYC than I expected. Two of the city's signature foods are smoked meat and bagels which are allegedly unique to the city--I haven't tasted a "real" Montreal bagel yet, but smoked meat is just...smoked meat. That's its name. Smoked meat is like, a thing. Let me 'splain:

The idea of "smoked meat" can be confusing because it sounds more like a category that would include things like smoked salmon and whatever lutefisk is, but instead it is its own unique thing, like pastrami or corned beef. As a matter of fact, smoked meat exists somewhere on the continuum between pastrami and corned beef, although it tastes like neither. Wikipedia informs me that the methods use to preserve the meat are unique, and you can go and read more about it there.

We figured we'd kill two birds with one stone, so we ordered some poutine. Fun fact: if you're French Canadian, you say it more like the guy who runs Russia than "poo-teen." Again, Wikipedia provides cool insight into possible etymology of the word. Most people know that poutine is cheese curds and gravy over fries, but what nobody seemed to be able to tell me was what in the world a cheese curd actually is. After consuming cheese curds, I can tell you that they are vaguely squishy and squeaky (leading to their nickname of "squeaky cheese") and not particularly melty. They are cheese, which is really all I needed to know in the first place.

We obtained these smoked meat sandwiches and poutine at Dunn's, which is one of the places to go to get smoked meat, the other being Schwartz's. What they don't mention when they recommend that you go to this restaurant is that their mascot, a pickle who this website informs me is named "Dillon Dunn," is TERRIFYING.

It seems like anything you'd order that would normally have pastrami or corned beef on it comes with smoked meat instead; I ordered a Reuben and it was delicious.