If you’re a tourist I recommend Schwartz’s for the experience, but there’s lots of excellent and not so excellent options around town as well. I’m not opposed to trying out a new or old place so here’s my Cliff’s Notes¹ summary of places in case you’re looking for inspiration!

• Lester’s – another institution since 1951, old school ambience, their meat has nice flavour but it’s (strangely?) wetter, going here if I’m Mile-End or north
• Snowdon Deli – more of a western Montreal institution since 1946, decent smoked meat, I feel like they get more renown for their other menu items like a bazillion tiny sandwiches, and people have made claims they don’t make their own smoked meat but I have never found any solid evidence, going here if I’m around Decarie for some reason
• Reuben’s (downstairs): just to confuse people there’s two Reuben’s just down the street from each other, the downstairs one feels like a real hole which… is authentic enough. Smoked meat is borderline acceptable, the waitstaff the last TWO times I went attempted some sort of cash-only card-machine-broken scam to get another dollar or two in tips. So I guess they get a lot of naive tourists and don’t care about the aftermath
• Reuben’s (upstairs): the upstairs one is more of a respectable restaurant, feels almost too posh for good smoked meat but it was pretty decent last time I was here, they have good desserts too
• Dunn’s: this was an institution, is now a chain, the smoked meat is borderline acceptable but not a lot of love here, the one downtown is open 24/7 though so that fills a Main sized hole in the roster
• Smoked Meat Pete: smoked meat is very solid, suburban vibes since 1996, there’s some good lore about how it was started by the son of the owner of The Main which was formerly across the street and was the contrarian’s smoked meat choice. If I’m in Hudson or otherwise off the western tip of the island, this is the place.
• Delibees: Another West Island Smoked Meat option that for some reason we rarely preferred? I remember it being pretty decent, and it’s my current West Island choice! Closer to the old Main style smoked meat although maybe it’s the vague griminess adding flavour, which somehow… seems appropriate for a good smoked meat place? Apparently this is run by the brother of Smoked Meat Pete who also wanted to do his own thing. Not sure what smoked meat is doing to this family…
• Chenoy’s: Smoked Meat Pete vibes, my dad and grandpa always took me here when I was out on the west island for any variety of unfortunate reasons. Another one where the meat’s a bit wetter and I don’t know why. I prefer Delibees unless I want the nostalgia or need smoked meat at 5 am in the West Island, as apparently they are still 24 hours?
• Roi Du Smoked Meat: I dunno who’s giving out these royal titles but… they’ve been there forever (1954) so I guess hard to depose, and they’re definitely the king of St. Hubert smoked meat. Acceptable smoked meat last time I had it, this place feels like a Greek diner that also has smoked meat. I like Greek diners.

1. I actually looked it up and its CliffsNotes for the company, but it was originally styled Cliff’s Notes, so there’s your Cliff’s Notes on CliffsNotes ↩︎