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.

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.

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

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.”

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.

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

Caribbean Roti (c. 1960s)

While this flavourful dish wasn’t invented in Canada, it has become a staple on the Canadian dining scene for the past 60 years, especially in and around Toronto. Roti’s evolution is emblematic of global migration movements. First, it travelled from India to the Caribbean as early as 1840 with the arrival of indentured labourers from India who brought their flavours with them and later came to Canada by the mid-20th century as thousands departed Caribbean nations for Ontario and Quebec. Typically Trinidadian, but also beloved in Guyana, Barbados and Jamaica, the Caribbean Roti is a soft, flaky flatbread served with rich fillings like curried chicken or goat, chickpeas and potatoes. These days, it’s an iconic Toronto dish, where you’ll find dozens of roti shops.

Caesar (c. 1969)

A bowl of pasta inspired Canada’s most iconic cocktail. Walter Chell, the bartender at the Calgary Inn, was asked to create a new cocktail to celebrate the opening of an Italian restaurant in the hotel. He spent three months mixing things up and finally created the Bloody Caesar, inspired by the classic pasta dish made with clams and tomatoes, Spaghetti alle Vongole. Chell created the cocktail by combining clam and tomato juice (hence also creating Clamato juice) with vodka, a dash and Worcestershire sauce and rimming the glass with celery salt. Canada’s cocktail was born. Today, Canadians consume more than 400 million of them a year, and they are a popular restaurant drink in steakhouses, and especially in Alberta.

Donair (c. 1970s)

The donair, Halifax’s iconic dish and a favourite late-night item on restaurant menus, is another example of adapted foods that became iconic Canadian dishes. Peter Gamoulakos immigrated from Greece in 1959, landing in Halifax, where he opened several pizza restaurants with his brothers (a typical Greek chain migration move for the period) and where he started serving kebabs, the famous Turkish street food wrap, but no one seemed interested. It wasn’t until Gamoulakos swapped the lamb for beef and the tzatziki for his own special sauce made with evaporated milk that donairs took off with locals. In 1976, he opened Mr. Donair with his brother John Kamoulakos, and this is when donairs became famous – today they are a staple item at pizza shops in Halifax and across the country.

Japadog (c. 2005)

Like many iconic Canadian restaurant dishes, the famous Japanese-style hot dogs of Japadog were created out of necessity. When Noriki Tamura and his wife Misa immigrated to Vancouver in 2005, they wanted to open a street cart selling Japanese food, but there was a big problem – the only type of food cart they could open under the city’s strict by-laws was a hot dog cart. So, they improvised, and the Japadog was born. Instead of serving the classic American-style dogs, Tamura used Japanese ingredients to create a whole new type of hot dog; their flagship dog is the Terimayo with Wagyu beef, Japanese mayo, teriyaki sauce, shredded seaweed and fried onions. Now there are at least a dozen different Japadogs to choose from, along with a wider menu. Their first location on the corner of Smithe and Burrard was an instant success, and still stands today, along with four other carts across the city and a couple of brick-and-mortar spots too.