EAT ME

Slices of Life, Grilled

The late pop music genius Warren Zevon near the end of his life urged viewers of ‘Late Night’ and by extension his fans to “enjoy every sandwich.” I didn’t need to be reminded. I consider myself a fairly well-rounded person, which means I don’t particularly excel at anything but I do construct awesome sandwiches. And the funny thing about sandwiches is that if someone close to you, a friend or family member, makes you one, they taste just that much better even if the ingredients aren’t quite up to snuff to an extended pinkie sandwich snob.

“Oh dear, a sliced gherkin instead of a proper kosher dill for a crunchy accent? Tsk-tsk.”

My Nana Moore made other-worldly toasted cheese sandwiches with white POM Bakery bread, butter and Kraft Deluxe genuine (sort of) cheddar slices; I’ve never been able to replicate that taste. My Auntie Mag, a creative director at a major ad agency during the ‘Mad Men’ era, a painter and a part-time model insisted I eat exotic open-faced sandwiches. My old friend Tim’s mother made the best egg salad; perhaps Tim’s mom would prefer not to be remembered in this way but those delicious sandwiches meant their house was always open to a confused kid from a broken home. Here at the Crooked 9 I derive delight assembling breakfast or lunch sandwiches for Ann.

Beyond the domestic kitchens, the labour of love or affection, are the delicatessens, shops and taverns or pubs. As a traveller a long way from many places while sometimes haunting familiar turf, the available sandwiches have from time to time dictated the course of a day out. As they should. If Ann and I go back to Barbados the attraction might not be the Caribbean beach at Worthing so much as the potato roti further up the road. We have friends and relations in Ottawa but, you know, Nate’s on Rideau Street has closed its doors.

There are some great sandwiches to be had in Edmonton. Shawarma dressed with beet relish in the north end and worthy of a tourist visit in February, calzones or peri-peri drenched pork chops on floury Portuguese rolls along Alberta Avenue, donairs and falafel on Whyte. I’ve even had the cook at the Route 99 diner try to recreate a Montreal-style steak and pepperoni hero. The Steak Out on Parsons Road serves Lester’s smoked meat; the samosas at nearby Punjabi Sweets, a former Dairy Queen outlet judging from the building’s cookie-cutter, sun room design, are the size of baseballs but taste a whole lot better.

I don’t know much but I know sandwiches way beyond the Biblical sense: I eat them; I make them; I buy them. A Montreal high school chum with Edmonton connections was in town last weekend. Tony and I were football teammates but not close. We are Facebook friends and he has contributed a couple of pieces to meGeoff. These days, together, we are filling in a jigsaw puzzle that’s been missing pieces for some 40 years. My friend is a tad eccentric but I can compete and both of us still puff away on cigarettes. I was surprised to learn that he too had spent teenage summers living with his older brother in a downtown Edmonton highrise. I cannot comprehend how our paths never crossed on Jasper Avenue. The provincial capital was not a big city in those days. And so last Saturday afternoon I suggested to Ann and Tony that the three of us cross the river and head downtown for a sandwich.

“Let’s go to Teddy’s!”

Tony couldn’t remember the last time he’d actually been in the core. I figured he might get a kick out of the abounding and disruptive change transforming this place: closed roads, cranes, deep holes surrounded by hoarding, scaffolding, giant tarps snapping like locker room towels on steel skeletons. Should all the work ever be completed, Edmonton, like our hometown following the grandiose delirium of the Expo ’67 and the ’76 Olympics, will be a sparkling new science fiction dream city. Also, I hadn’t eaten a corned beef sandwich at Teddy’s in 25 years.

Teddy’s made local headlines in 2018 when it finally reopened in the wake of a catastrophic flood and a year or so of reclamation. The restaurant is on the west end of Jasper and often in the shadow of St. Joseph’s Cathedral, its massive granite neighbour. Thirty years ago I used to reside nearby, a short-cut alley and a pedestrian crosswalk away. I lived alone in a one-bedroom apartment and couldn’t stand the company. I had other hangouts besides Teddy’s but sometimes I had to eat and change the backdrop wall of booze.

Back then Teddy’s corned beef sandwiches were stacked liked the smoked meats back home I missed so much. It was crucial to mainline my annual sodium intake in one sitting. The potato salad was stellar but it had better be in a gussied up deli. The interior lighting was dim, everybody looked a little more attractive, even me; there was a lot of dark wood, the booths, the bar. What I loved about Teddy’s then (and now) was that there was only one. There were no spin off mall kiosks or plastic packaged, branded sliced brisket in grocery stores.

Forgive me while I remember. Tim (not Tony) and I walked down Simpson to Sherbrooke Street. If I recall correctly we were still in high school but seniors, getting on. My mother had remarried and I was now living in downtown Montreal proximate to the Golden Square Mile. I knew places where kids could disappear, nooks and crannies where we couldn’t be seen or heard. Tim and I smoked some hash on the brick plinth of Le Port-Royal, a non-descript grey tower, Ayn Rand’s wet dream of ‘Fountainhead’ architecture and consequently an aesthetic crime perpetuated upon all who ever had the misfortune of gazing upon it – a lot like downtown Edmonton in retrospect. We went into a depanneur to buy some Player’s cigarettes. One of us spotted tins of Tahiti Treat in a cooler with sliding glass doors. Oh boy! Neither of us had enjoyed the red, fruity soda since we’d been nippers taught by nuns.

We found a bench, lit smokes and cracked open our cans. You know, when your mouth gets dry, you’re plenty high. We guzzled our Tahiti Treats. Silence in the company of a good friend has never bothered me. But this particular instance, this vacuum punctuated by many swallows, tooth rotting, tongue smacking, Jell-O saliva, was a life lesson. Tim coined a phrase that afternoon on the bench: “Tahiti Treat Syndrome.” There’s no going back to whatever it was; even if something hasn’t changed it can never match a sepia memory.

The new Teddy’s features a discreet corner of depravity. I’ve read that a fruit machine can be worth as much as $50,000 in additional revenue to the establishment that rents it. I guessed there were about a dozen video lottery terminals within staggering distance of the bar and bank machine, but cordoned off, mind. My despair at this state of affairs was alleviated somewhat by the glistening, sparkling men’s room; I know what really matters to me now. There were a few day drinkers at the bar watching television.

We selected a window table with a Jasper view in the empty dining area. Tony ordered an omelette from the All Day Breakfast menu. Ann chose a Reuben. I ordered a corned beef on rye, I had to. The sandwiches’ fillings did not appear to be as generous as my memory suggested they would be, the bread slices were thicker. Still, more often than not Ann and I remind each other too late that we should’ve shared a meal and eaten the plate charge, but some old habits are so hard to break. My Nana surmised that I packed a dozen toasted cheese triangles into a hollow leg. Auntie Mag learned that four open-face sandwiches merely equated to two proper ones in my book. I remember going into Tim’s house: “Mom? I’ve brought two people home for lunch today, Geoff and Moore.”

Part of the fading, renovated charm of Teddy’s is that there’s just the one, an iota of legacy in what is still a young city. It’s also fair to compare Teddy’s to the last inglorious days of Ben’s Delicatessen in Montreal; it’s not what it was: Tahiti Treat Syndrome. Maybe the fruit machines will keep Teddy’s afloat although that might be a losing bet. Last Saturday afternoon I was the youngest patron in a crowd thinner than Teddy’s corned beef sandwiches. I’m 59.