The Origin Story of Five Iconic Canadian Restaurant Dishes

By Gabby Peyton

Restaurant dishes play an important (and delicious) role in the Canadian culinary landscape. Across the country every day, Canadians patronize cafes, food trucks, restaurants and roadside diners enjoying the plethora of plates filled with delicious food, iconic dishes that are recognized the world over as iconically Canadian.

Many of the iconic Canadian foods are actually adaptation foods — dishes that were created or reimagined for the Canadian dining scene after being imported via recipe books and chefs from around the world over. For generations, immigrants arrived in Canada and opened restaurants because it was one of the few industries available to them and dishes that were created to appease a local palate and bring people into newly opened restaurants ended up becoming iconic Canadian foods.

For most restaurant owners there wasn’t a particular eureka moment, but instead, a spur-of-the-moment decision to toss some cheese curds on top of fries or pineapple on a pizza, creating iconic dishes Canadians can’t get enough of. Here is the origin story of five Canadian restaurant dishes.

Restaurant-Dishes-Schwartz's-Montreal-Smoked-Meat

Montreal Smoked Meat (c. 1900s)

When thousands of Romanian Jews immigrated to Canada in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, they brought their culinary traditions with them and went on to popularize one of Canada’s most sought-after dishes: the Montreal Smoked Meat Sandwich, consisting of layers of smoked beef piled high onto rye bread, usually with a thin slather of mustard. Aaron Sanft immigrated to Montreal, Quebec in the 1880s and is credited with creating the smoked meat for his deli. The British-American Delicatessen Store is said to be the first place to serve up the sandwich on their menu in 1909, followed by Bens De Luxe Delicatessen. Today it’s Schwartzs (also known as the Montreal Hebrew Delicatessen, circa 1928) on Saint-Laurent Street that has a lineup out the door — they popularized the Montreal Smoked Meat sandwich and made it one of the country’s most recognizable dishes.

Poutine (c.1967)

The creation of poutine has several origins stories, but both begin with a dairy surplus. In the 1950s, Quebec experienced a major dairy surplus, resulting in a tremendous amount of cheese curds which started being sold as a snack in casse croutes across the province. Many patrons would toss those cheese curds on top of their French fries, a poutine pre-cursor so to speak. One of the three poutine origin stories belongs to Le Roy Jucep in Drummondville, Quebec who owns the trademark to the dish (the certificate is on the wall in the restaurant to this day). According to culinary lore, it was owner Jean-Paul Roy who put poutine — a pile of fries covered in cheese curds and gravy — in 1967 and named it poutine as a homage to one of the cooks nicknamed “Ti-pout.”

Hawaiian Pizza (c.1962)

Canada’s most famous pizza is also its most polarizing — Hawaiian pizza. Some love the idea of pineapple on pizza, while others despise it. Hawaiian pizza was invented in 1962 by Sotirios “Sam” Panopoulos, a Greek immigrant who owned the Satellite Restaurant in Chatham-Kent, Ontario. It’s said he tasted pizza for the first time on a stopover in Naples. The Tiki trend was all the rage and tropical fruits were everywhere, including on the shelves of Panopoulos’ restaurant, so he decided to toss some pineapple on top of a pizza and the Hawaiian pizza was born. The pie became a sensation the world over and to this day causes fights at the dining table.

California Roll (c. 1974)

Contrary to popular belief, the California Roll was not invented in Los Angeles, but its inventor drew some inspiration from the coastal city. Hidekazu Tojo immigrated to Vancouver from Japan in the early 1970s ready to serve up sushi to the masses, but there was one problem — Vancouverites were not on board. At the time, even health inspectors were wary of sushi restaurants so when Tojo was working at the four-seat Jinya on West Broadway in 1974, he decided to turn the maki roll inside out, concealing the seaweed inside, along with cooked crab. He called it a California Roll after the only people who wanted to eat sushi, LA out-of-towners. You can still grab a roll from the original maker — Tojo’s self-named restaurant in Vancouver still serves it today under the name “Tojo Roll.”

Restaurant-Dishes-Silver-Inn-Restaurant-Ginger-Beef

Ginger Beef (c. 1970s)

Ginger beef, the delicious Chinese Canadian favourite, was invented at The Silver Inn Restaurant in Calgary in the late 1970s and is the perfect example of an adaptation food. Two sisters, Louise Tsang and Lily Wong immigrated from Hong Kong and opened the 4th Street Southwest institution in 1975, but it was Lily’s husband George who created ginger beef. Aimed at enticing white diners who made up most of their patrons, he adapted a Peking-style beef dish to suit local tastes — having spent time in England working in kitchens, he knew Canadians would appreciate anything deep fried with a sauce on top and so ginger beef was born: deep-fried strips of beef tossed with a sweet-chili ginger sauce. On the menu, it was listed as No. 65 “deep fried shredded beef in chili sauce” but no one could ever remember the name, so people started calling it “the beef with the ginger stuff” and so the name was born.