Meet the man that made his delicatessen a city staple.
R aise your hand if this is a familiar scenario : you walk into your local grocery store, head over to the deli counter and ask for some smoked meat. On your way out you grab a loaf of bread and a jar of mustard. You get home, you finally put the sandwich together, sit down and take a bite and the realization hits, it tastes good but not like it would from a good ol’ deli.
If there is one food concept that has stood the test of time, it’s the delicatessen. For decades, delis have been a neighborhood staple for many families, serving up cured meats, cheeses, sausages, ham, liverwurst, salami, you name it. Each and every major city in North America it seems has its tried and true, go-to deli. New Yorkers go to Katz Deli, Montrealers go to Schwartz. For Torontonians, the smoked meat sanctuary is Caplansky’s.
Caplansky’s has come a long way, from the days at the Monarch Tavern to their new digs on College Street. We had a conversation with founder Zane Caplansky about his journey on the visionary winding road which culminated in this distinct and delicious food reality.
What’s in a name?
Well, one of the names I was originally going to call it was Caplan’s. Then I thought Caplan’s kind of sounds like an appliance store or a furniture store, and also my mother and brother are politicians so in a lot of ways I didn’t want to play on the family name. And then I thought to myself “Caplansky” that just sounds like such a good name and also it gave me an opportunity to rebrand myself, not just the restaurant.
Once a dot com millionaire.
I’ve done so many things, I was a dotcom millionaire back in the ‘90s, I was a consultant for Hewlett Packard and Compaq, I used to work on election campaigns for a living, I was a ski bum, I spent five years backpacking around the world, after working as a waiter, I went to George Brown College for culinary after working as a chef’s apprentice at a restaurant in B.C and I’ve worked in every capacity in the restaurant business.
When I got back to Toronto, the dotcom era went bust and at the time I was married to my business partner so when the bubble burst on the business, the marriage also ended. I had to figure out what I wanted to do with myself and I really did a lot of pretty intense soul searching to decide who I was essentially. There was a book called What Colour is Your Parachute that I had read and did the exercises in. Everything pointed back to food and hospitality. I had worked jobs earning a quarter of a million dollars a year, glamourous and high profile things and I decided I was gonna go take an $11/$12 an hour job as a bench cook. So I started working at restaurants and I really enjoyed it and sort of spent a few years doing that until the idea of doing a deli came to me.
The Schwartz Connection.
Some friends of mine were going to Montreal so I asked them to pick me up a sandwich from Schwartz. They didn’t end up getting it, and I just sat there at midnight waiting for a guy who worked for me, who was supposed to bring me back the sandwich. He never delivered and I thought, why can’t you get smoked meat in Toronto? Why can’t you find this here?
And so I went on eBay and bought a smoker online. I bought a brisket and I googled the process behind smoked meat. Essentially with smoked meat there’s four parts, there’s curing, spicing, smoking and slicing. Curing is scientific, there’s a few ways of doing it but there’s essentially a recipe. The spice flavour was something that I sort of tweaked as I went, smoking as well – like how much smoke do you give it, what kind of smoke do you give it – and slicing was a skill I had to learn.
The Art of Deli.
Somebody earlier today said to me, Who was your guru? Where did you school in the art of deli? and I said you know what, the truth is, I’m pretty much self taught. I knew the flavour I was going for and when I made my first briskets, they were way smokier than anything I ever had before. The spicing was different and at first the texture was amazing but the taste was strong. Everybody else that I gave my meat to try loved it, because they didn’t know what I was trying to get it to taste like. It became clear that my taste was different, it’s my signature flavour and I kinda had to dial back the smokiness a little bit. I tweaked the spicing a bit and the equipment that I’ve used has changed over time as well, but for the most part we got ourselves into a pretty good zone. That’s essentially how it happened. It happened in a pretty organic, holistic way.
Growing Pains.
I brought my new found flavours to the restaurant and gave everyone a taste and they went crazy for it. Then I thought okay well, how should I do this? And I was broke so I thought about a hotdog cart because it’s already cooked, you’re just steaming it, so I could do it on a hotdog cart… but unfortunately the city had a moratorium on hotdog carts because of the a la carte program, which by the way was a total failure, so I thought about maybe doing it like the San Francesco guys, like just a little take out window. And just going “how many sandwiches?” “here you go” “fries? “how many?” “thank you very much”
Even if I would’ve done it that way, I didn’t have enough money for it. Starting out at the Monarch we did it from a totally blank slate. I paid everybody cash, there was no reporting of any kind for the first few months. I had no idea what was gonna happen. Until David Sax wrote the Globe and Mail article before I opened. I opened on Tuesday it came out on Saturday. The article read “Jewish Tradition comes downtown!”. They have me standing there holding my sandwich, all posed ‘cause I wasn’t opened yet. We made up this shot. It was supposed to be buried in the paper; the photographer said to me that the editor intended to put it as just a little article inside. He liked the picture so much that they put it on the front page, full colour, with another picture inside. And it was the very first time that they had used my name as “Caplansky”. It was weird, for 40 years I had said “Caplan”, you know “Hi, I’m Zane Caplan” now It’s Zane Caplansky. It took me a while to get used to it.
Starting out, I had a business plan – 2 to 3 sandwiches a day is what my business plan projected I would sell. Who’s gonna know where I am, there’s no sign, I mean, I told a bunch of people so I figured the first day I might have 20 people show up. You know, friends and relatives. 140 people showed up, cleaned us out of the whole first week’s supply. We had to close for a week. This lead to another article, “Caplansky’s opens and closes on the same day!” And I actually called David Sax. I was despondent that I had ran out of meat and I thought I failed. And he was like no, spin it, spin it. He told me, call all the food writers you can think of and apologize for running out of meat and disappointing customers and be there to mark everyday when people show up. And so I started giving out two for one sandwich coupons … and I would say “come back and try it again”.
And when we re-opened, the Globe actually printed the next weekend “Caplansky’s ran out of meat”. We re-opened the following week and it was twice as bad. I knew by that point what to do. I could see it wasn’t going to be one or two sandwiches a day so I bought a lot of meat, sold a lot of meat and started hiring people too because at first it was just me. I figured on day one I might need a hand, so I got somebody from the Magic Oven from where I was the manager, to come and be my waitress.
When we opened this place (Caplansky’s on College), we hired 60 people. Between 2 shifts, 7 days a week, it takes almost 10 people when the patio’s open. You have 4 servers, a bartender, a host, a cashier, that’s 7 people at a minimum and then 2 shifts – So 14 people and then the kitchen you’ve got at least as many. It’s a very different undertaking and it’s been a very challenging start but like I said, after the re- opening, we’ve been able to be a little more strategic about how we’ve done things.
Daily Dose of Chaos.
The chaos that you walked into here, that moment, in the first half hour it’s just like that the entire day…Especially on the weekends around here, some days it’s just like 1:30, 2:30 ,3:30, okay its 4:30 and we still have a line-up at the door. When the patio’s going and we’re turning over tables like that it can be a very busy place. We actually did a wedding the second day we were open.
It was on Ward Island. The customer said, go down to the ferry terminal, go across and this is where you walk towards, no problem at all. I thought I knew the whole set-up. There was also a festival that same day on the island, so there’s 1000 people waiting to get on the ferries, the line up was hours long! But the event went well and the couple was very cool. This is what I love about what I do…Everyday is different, everyday has its own challenges, and I really am trying to focus on enjoying it all.
Gourmet.
I’d have to say that the Gourmet Magazine article on us was great. There was Maxim as well; Maxim did the ten best delis in North America and we got a great reference there. I used to be a subscriber to Gourmet Magazine and when the issue was about to come out the author called me and said he had just found out that Gourmet is only gonna publish it online. And I was like, don’t worry I’m still gonna be in Gourmet Magazine. And he was like well, there’s gonna be a little blurb in the print edition, but the whole thing is gonna be online.
So I was driving past a Shopper’s Drug-mart, it was late at night and I wondered if that Gourmet issue was out. So I went inside and I actually went to the back of the magazine, the online blurb is usually on the last two pages and I started flipping through the back … and I’m like no, no ,no and I was almost at the front of the magazine. I was like, well that’s alright, It’s still cool, I’ll still be able to say I was on Gourmet online…
but on page 18 there was a picture of me and the first two words were “Zane Caplansky” with a big ‘Z’ and I think I stopped breathing… To see myself in Gourmet was great. This is the oldest food magazine in the world.
I could imagine what the real chefs in the city say, I mean, I’m a deli guy, I’m not a chef. When the real chef guys in the city saw that article they were probably like.. “Uggggh! Caplansky”. I keep getting all these fantastic opportunities. These are the kinds of articles that when people visit the city they’ll make a point of coming here because they read about it. For the rest of my life I’ll always have that and whether the business succeeds or fails – I mean I’ll do my best to see that it succeeds, but I really feel a proud sense of authenticity and it’s because of all of this press and all of this publicity.
Reflection.
It’s been an amazing journey…
When I came up with the idea of why doesn’t Toronto have smoked meat at the same time I thought I’ve been working in restaurants for all these years, I never knew exactly what my thing was gonna be. Actually when I was at George Brown College I developed the idea of a tea house, a modern tea house but it just never clicked.
What I proved was that if you have the passion and the will to do something – it’s very cliche where there’s a will there’s a way – If I wanted people to learn one thing from my own experience it would be just that, even at 40 years old, even with all these things I’ve done with my life, It’s never too late to re-invent yourself and if you’re true to yourself.
For more info on Caplansky’s, check out their website.
Interview & Photography by Chuck Ortiz.
Assisted by Antonio Fernandez.
Transcribed & Edited by Arianne Persaud.
Zane Caplansky.
Meet the man that made his delicatessen a city staple.
R aise your hand if this is a familiar scenario : you walk into your local grocery store, head over to the deli counter and ask for some smoked meat. On your way out you grab a loaf of bread and a jar of mustard. You get home, you finally put the sandwich together, sit down and take a bite and the realization hits, it tastes good but not like it would from a good ol’ deli.
If there is one food concept that has stood the test of time, it’s the delicatessen. For decades, delis have been a neighborhood staple for many families, serving up cured meats, cheeses, sausages, ham, liverwurst, salami, you name it. Each and every major city in North America it seems has its tried and true, go-to deli. New Yorkers go to Katz Deli, Montrealers go to Schwartz. For Torontonians, the smoked meat sanctuary is Caplansky’s.
Caplansky’s has come a long way, from the days at the Monarch Tavern to their new digs on College Street. We had a conversation with founder Zane Caplansky about his journey on the visionary winding road which culminated in this distinct and delicious food reality.
What’s in a name?
Well, one of the names I was originally going to call it was Caplan’s. Then I thought Caplan’s kind of sounds like an appliance store or a furniture store, and also my mother and brother are politicians so in a lot of ways I didn’t want to play on the family name. And then I thought to myself “Caplansky” that just sounds like such a good name and also it gave me an opportunity to rebrand myself, not just the restaurant.
Once a dot com millionaire.
I’ve done so many things, I was a dotcom millionaire back in the ‘90s, I was a consultant for Hewlett Packard and Compaq, I used to work on election campaigns for a living, I was a ski bum, I spent five years backpacking around the world, after working as a waiter, I went to George Brown College for culinary after working as a chef’s apprentice at a restaurant in B.C and I’ve worked in every capacity in the restaurant business.
When I got back to Toronto, the dotcom era went bust and at the time I was married to my business partner so when the bubble burst on the business, the marriage also ended. I had to figure out what I wanted to do with myself and I really did a lot of pretty intense soul searching to decide who I was essentially. There was a book called What Colour is Your Parachute that I had read and did the exercises in. Everything pointed back to food and hospitality. I had worked jobs earning a quarter of a million dollars a year, glamourous and high profile things and I decided I was gonna go take an $11/$12 an hour job as a bench cook. So I started working at restaurants and I really enjoyed it and sort of spent a few years doing that until the idea of doing a deli came to me.
The Schwartz Connection.
Some friends of mine were going to Montreal so I asked them to pick me up a sandwich from Schwartz. They didn’t end up getting it, and I just sat there at midnight waiting for a guy who worked for me, who was supposed to bring me back the sandwich. He never delivered and I thought, why can’t you get smoked meat in Toronto? Why can’t you find this here?
And so I went on eBay and bought a smoker online. I bought a brisket and I googled the process behind smoked meat. Essentially with smoked meat there’s four parts, there’s curing, spicing, smoking and slicing. Curing is scientific, there’s a few ways of doing it but there’s essentially a recipe. The spice flavour was something that I sort of tweaked as I went, smoking as well – like how much smoke do you give it, what kind of smoke do you give it – and slicing was a skill I had to learn.
The Art of Deli.
Somebody earlier today said to me, Who was your guru? Where did you school in the art of deli? and I said you know what, the truth is, I’m pretty much self taught. I knew the flavour I was going for and when I made my first briskets, they were way smokier than anything I ever had before. The spicing was different and at first the texture was amazing but the taste was strong. Everybody else that I gave my meat to try loved it, because they didn’t know what I was trying to get it to taste like. It became clear that my taste was different, it’s my signature flavour and I kinda had to dial back the smokiness a little bit. I tweaked the spicing a bit and the equipment that I’ve used has changed over time as well, but for the most part we got ourselves into a pretty good zone. That’s essentially how it happened. It happened in a pretty organic, holistic way.
Growing Pains.
I brought my new found flavours to the restaurant and gave everyone a taste and they went crazy for it. Then I thought okay well, how should I do this? And I was broke so I thought about a hotdog cart because it’s already cooked, you’re just steaming it, so I could do it on a hotdog cart… but unfortunately the city had a moratorium on hotdog carts because of the a la carte program, which by the way was a total failure, so I thought about maybe doing it like the San Francesco guys, like just a little take out window. And just going “how many sandwiches?” “here you go” “fries? “how many?” “thank you very much”
Even if I would’ve done it that way, I didn’t have enough money for it. Starting out at the Monarch we did it from a totally blank slate. I paid everybody cash, there was no reporting of any kind for the first few months. I had no idea what was gonna happen. Until David Sax wrote the Globe and Mail article before I opened. I opened on Tuesday it came out on Saturday. The article read “Jewish Tradition comes downtown!”. They have me standing there holding my sandwich, all posed ‘cause I wasn’t opened yet. We made up this shot. It was supposed to be buried in the paper; the photographer said to me that the editor intended to put it as just a little article inside. He liked the picture so much that they put it on the front page, full colour, with another picture inside. And it was the very first time that they had used my name as “Caplansky”. It was weird, for 40 years I had said “Caplan”, you know “Hi, I’m Zane Caplan” now It’s Zane Caplansky. It took me a while to get used to it.
Starting out, I had a business plan – 2 to 3 sandwiches a day is what my business plan projected I would sell. Who’s gonna know where I am, there’s no sign, I mean, I told a bunch of people so I figured the first day I might have 20 people show up. You know, friends and relatives. 140 people showed up, cleaned us out of the whole first week’s supply. We had to close for a week. This lead to another article, “Caplansky’s opens and closes on the same day!” And I actually called David Sax. I was despondent that I had ran out of meat and I thought I failed. And he was like no, spin it, spin it. He told me, call all the food writers you can think of and apologize for running out of meat and disappointing customers and be there to mark everyday when people show up. And so I started giving out two for one sandwich coupons … and I would say “come back and try it again”.
And when we re-opened, the Globe actually printed the next weekend “Caplansky’s ran out of meat”. We re-opened the following week and it was twice as bad. I knew by that point what to do. I could see it wasn’t going to be one or two sandwiches a day so I bought a lot of meat, sold a lot of meat and started hiring people too because at first it was just me. I figured on day one I might need a hand, so I got somebody from the Magic Oven from where I was the manager, to come and be my waitress.
When we opened this place (Caplansky’s on College), we hired 60 people. Between 2 shifts, 7 days a week, it takes almost 10 people when the patio’s open. You have 4 servers, a bartender, a host, a cashier, that’s 7 people at a minimum and then 2 shifts – So 14 people and then the kitchen you’ve got at least as many. It’s a very different undertaking and it’s been a very challenging start but like I said, after the re- opening, we’ve been able to be a little more strategic about how we’ve done things.
Daily Dose of Chaos.
The chaos that you walked into here, that moment, in the first half hour it’s just like that the entire day…Especially on the weekends around here, some days it’s just like 1:30, 2:30 ,3:30, okay its 4:30 and we still have a line-up at the door. When the patio’s going and we’re turning over tables like that it can be a very busy place. We actually did a wedding the second day we were open.
It was on Ward Island. The customer said, go down to the ferry terminal, go across and this is where you walk towards, no problem at all. I thought I knew the whole set-up. There was also a festival that same day on the island, so there’s 1000 people waiting to get on the ferries, the line up was hours long! But the event went well and the couple was very cool. This is what I love about what I do…Everyday is different, everyday has its own challenges, and I really am trying to focus on enjoying it all.
Gourmet.
I’d have to say that the Gourmet Magazine article on us was great. There was Maxim as well; Maxim did the ten best delis in North America and we got a great reference there. I used to be a subscriber to Gourmet Magazine and when the issue was about to come out the author called me and said he had just found out that Gourmet is only gonna publish it online. And I was like, don’t worry I’m still gonna be in Gourmet Magazine. And he was like well, there’s gonna be a little blurb in the print edition, but the whole thing is gonna be online.
So I was driving past a Shopper’s Drug-mart, it was late at night and I wondered if that Gourmet issue was out. So I went inside and I actually went to the back of the magazine, the online blurb is usually on the last two pages and I started flipping through the back … and I’m like no, no ,no and I was almost at the front of the magazine. I was like, well that’s alright, It’s still cool, I’ll still be able to say I was on Gourmet online…
but on page 18 there was a picture of me and the first two words were “Zane Caplansky” with a big ‘Z’ and I think I stopped breathing… To see myself in Gourmet was great. This is the oldest food magazine in the world.
I could imagine what the real chefs in the city say, I mean, I’m a deli guy, I’m not a chef. When the real chef guys in the city saw that article they were probably like.. “Uggggh! Caplansky”. I keep getting all these fantastic opportunities. These are the kinds of articles that when people visit the city they’ll make a point of coming here because they read about it. For the rest of my life I’ll always have that and whether the business succeeds or fails – I mean I’ll do my best to see that it succeeds, but I really feel a proud sense of authenticity and it’s because of all of this press and all of this publicity.
Reflection.
It’s been an amazing journey…
When I came up with the idea of why doesn’t Toronto have smoked meat at the same time I thought I’ve been working in restaurants for all these years, I never knew exactly what my thing was gonna be. Actually when I was at George Brown College I developed the idea of a tea house, a modern tea house but it just never clicked.
What I proved was that if you have the passion and the will to do something – it’s very cliche where there’s a will there’s a way – If I wanted people to learn one thing from my own experience it would be just that, even at 40 years old, even with all these things I’ve done with my life, It’s never too late to re-invent yourself and if you’re true to yourself.
For more info on Caplansky’s, check out their website.
Interview & Photography by Chuck Ortiz.
Assisted by Antonio Fernandez.
Transcribed & Edited by Arianne Persaud.