Q1: With summer BBQ and picnics happening, meat eaters still love to chomp down on a meaty mouthful so are there any ways to buy “healthier” meat in Montreal?
A: Local European-style butchers are still making sausages, and luncheon meats the good old fashioned way by hand. They’ve been in business for years and know how to do it without a lot of chemicals. When shopping at their stores you don’t have to worry about big factory food contamination episodes. You can find them all over town, not necessarily just down on the Main (Boucherie Hongroise or Slovenia).
Q: 2 Can you give us some places to shop, let’s say on the West Island?
I was speaking to Peter of La Bernoise (3988 Boul. St-Charles, Pierrefonds, Phone: 514-620-6914) and he avoids phosphates and MSG when making his sausages, bacon and ham. Think about when you open a package of bacon and it’s all wet with water. Phosphates are added to suck up salt and water making the bacon weigh more (and taste less).
With their own smoker using real wood, this 30-year-old business has been able to cook authentic European (German and Swiss) specialty sausages, smoked pork chops and veal roast, smoked ham, bacon and smoked pork hocks. The butcher counter sports the meatloaf, air-dried sausages, knockwurst, lamb sausage, schublig and air dried beef, which you can eat with sauerkraut and squeeze-tube mustard along with rye bread made with muesli. Homemade whole wheat and 6-grain bread are available as well as groceries: dumpling mixes, Kuchen Meister cakes, Knacke brot plum butter, Lindt chocolates and even German crossword puzzle books.
Q: 3 What about nitrites and nitrates, aren’t those in sausages too, shouldn’t we be avoiding them?
At Salamico (1980 Lucien Thimens Ville St-Laurent, Phone: 514-336-7104), you can buy about 20 different types of nitrate-free sausages, like German white sausage (veal), Italian or breakfast sausage. Other popular ones: Toulouse with fine herbs, merguez, cheese and mushroom cheese and broccoli, lime and coriander. Julie Anne said the fat content is lower in her sausages too with the chicken sausage there’s only 5% fat. Pork ones have 15%, whereas at the supermarket it would be at least 20% or more fat added.
For 43 years, you could always find a little bit of the taste of your homeland (if it was Germany, Switzerland, Poland or Hungary) here. Some of their interesting specialties are Lyoner sausage, Hungarian salami, gendarme sausages, bacon with paprika, teewurst, smoked pork loins or hocks, duck fat and imported sauerkraut. For sandwiches, there’s sliced veal, roast beef, roast pork and different kinds of ham. Where else can you get “custom-made” meat where you can have them cook it in the way you like it?
Shelves of imported foods (gooseberry, prune jam or sour cherry syrup, PK herrings, ground poppy seeds, egg noodles, biscuits) run across the front of the store along with German magazines and cookbooks.
Q4: Okay, where’s the beef, what do you have to offer the beef lovers out there?
At Levinoff, (8610 8th ave., Montreal Nord, Phone: 514-725-2405), open since 1951, there’s a new upscale shop-at-home service for certified Angus prime cuts (the kind the restaurants use). You can get T-bone, rib roast, NY cut strip steak, rib steak or tenderloin; if you order $100 worth, there’s no delivery charge. Since they’re in the heart of an Italian district, handmade Italian sausages are always fresh and ground beef is always available at really low prices – and you can buy fresh chicken, pork and deli meats.
This is a win-win situation, if you shop at these stores, you are keeping them in business and buying healthier choices for your body. How many of you know the first name of the butcher you buy your meat from? It’s time to go back and shop at these informative family businesses and find out what you are eating.
