EATING OUR FEELINGS
Phil Klein on the Necessity of Pizza by COREY MINTZ
IF YOU LET YOUR restaurant employees eat for free, they’ll appreciate it. If you don’t, they’ll be hungry and steal from you. That was the lesson Phil Klein learned as a teenager, when he got fired from one of his early restaurant jobs for cooking himself a pizza. It’s something he keeps in mind now, as an employ- er. “If it keeps my staff happy and nourished to eat something on the job,” says Klein, “it’s a small token of appreciation that I think goes a long way.” In 2020, Klein launched Bagelsmith, a Montreal-style bagel shop in down- town Winnipeg. Separated from the East Coast Jewish hubs, Winnipeg had no loyalty to the bagel styles of Montreal (small, dense, slightly sweet) or New York (big, fluffy, salty). Winnipeggers were an ideal new market, primed to be converted by the first bagel-maker who made either style well. I moved to Win- nipeg around the same time Bagelsmith opened; perhaps it was a longing for some kind of culinary connection in my new home, but I fell hard for Klein’s Montreal-style bagels. (At the risk of both-sidesing this vital question, I like Montreal bagels as much as ones evoking New York.) In a town with so few bagels of distinction that Costco seems to be the local favourite, it felt like Ba- gelsmith had given Winnipeg a reason to pick a side in this debate. “I do think the style difference can be quite divisive,” says Shannon Sarna, author of Modern Jewish Baker and Modern Jewish Comfort Food . “I’ve found that the Montreal versus New York bagel divide is more alive for Cana- dians—especially Montrealers—who are passionate about their hometown
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FOOD/PROP STYLING/PHOTOGRAPHY MARISA CURATOLO
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