Let's get this out of the way: I drove to Montréal to spend a day eating Jewish food but skipped the smoked meat.

Don't get me wrong: I love a heap of hand-sliced, fat-laced, dry-rubbed and lightly smoked brisket, sandwiched between rye with a slick of sharp mustard, as much as the next carnivore. But I've indulged before, and the hefty dish does not wedge easily into a packed itinerary.

That said, I do regret missing the smoked meat at Snowdon Deli, the sixth stop on my mid-March gastronomic expedition.

I was digging happily into a plate of chopped liver when a neighboring table received the "perfect" smoked meat order — in the words of my guide, Montréal Jewish food expert Kat Romanow. The 39-year-old former restaurant owner and cofounder of the nonprofit the Wandering Chew created the Beyond the Bagel food tour in 2015 for the Museum of Jewish Montréal, where she was then director of food programming.

The sandwich sprawled open on the plate, exposing pink slices of meat that looked so tender they were almost indecent. It was accompanied by a pickle, a heap of bronzed fries and a Cott black cherry soda. Along with those sides, the meat should be ordered hot and medium fat — "never lean," Romanow cautioned.

The order belonged to Geoffrey Boyer, 63, who said he comes to Snowdon about once a month for smoked meat. "I can taste it before I even get here," he said. "I'm Jewish. It's our soul food."

When Boyer learned that I was on a Jewish food tour of his native city, he listed some favorites, including Beauty's and Arthur's Nosh Bar, which he was pleased to hear we had already visited.

The Museum of Jewish Montréal's food walking tours resume on April 19. Ahead of that date, Romanow drove me to a broader selection of destinations. They included multigenerational landmarks serving recipes that immigrants from Eastern Europe and Germany popularized in North America, along with a couple where we sampled cuisine favored by Jews with Moroccan or Israeli roots.

Culinary traditions are fluid over time and geography, especially when there is a history of migration. While some foods, such as bagels and babka, are identified closely with Jewish culinary traditions, others we ate — schnitzel and falafel, for instance — are associated equally with non-Jews from the same parts of the world.

All of my grandparents were bagel-and-brisket New York City Jews whose families fled brutal pogroms in the western Russian empire at the turn of the 20th century. My maternal grandmother always kept beet borscht in her fridge for a quick nosh — Yiddish for a snack or light meal.

I'm more of a nosher than a fresser (big eater). But Montréal's Jewish food abundance might change that.

Note: All prices are listed in Canadian dollars. Passover (sundown on April 22 to sundown on April 30) may affect hours and offerings.

We began in...

Le Plateau-Mont-Royal neighborhood at Beauty's Luncheonette (93 avenue Mont-Royal Ouest, 514-849-8883, Beautys Luncheonette on Facebook), where we found co-owner Julie Sckolnick, 50, perched on a counter stool.

Sckolnick runs the business with her sister, Elana. Their grandparents, Hymie and Freda, met at 14 while working in the Ideal Dress factory around the corner. In 1942, the second-generation Eastern European Jews bought a snack bar at their current location and named it for Hymie's bowling prowess. "He bowled a beauty of a ball," Sckolnick explained.

Hymie worked at Beauty's until his death at age 96. Sckolnick described him as "everyone's zaide" (Yiddish for grandfather).

We ordered the signature Mish-Mash omelette ($20), a well-browned scramble loaded with sliced hot dogs, salami, green pepper and onions. Served with a side of home fries, the dish is attributed to Freda, who "invented everything and worked like a maniac," Sckolnick said.

Romanow also recommended the Beauty's special ($17), a sesame bagel with cream cheese, smoked salmon, tomato and red onion. It was good but didn't strike me as special until Romanow explained that Montréal bagels are rarely eaten as sandwiches.

As a chaser, we couldn't resist the challah dog ($7), a hot dog encased in sesame-speckled dough. My boys would've loved it when they were kids.

Men with sidelocks in long black coats and black hats signaled we had arrived in Mile End, home to many Hasidic Jews and to St-Viateur Bagel and Fairmount Bagel. Seven Days covered the two iconic Jewish-founded bagel bakeries last year (see "Open Sésame," June 21, 2023).

We were headed to Cheskie's Kosher Bakery (359 rue Bernard Ouest, 514-271-2253, closed Fridays at 3 p.m. and Saturdays), which Cheskie Lebowitz opened in 2002 after moving from Brooklyn to marry. The bakery replicates his family's in Borough Park, N.Y., but "has become a part of Montréal Jewish food culture," Romanow said.

As I snapped a phone shot of tricornered hamantaschen cookies (12 for $10.78), a customer joked, "Better to eat them than take photos of them."

Cheskie's is known for its Russian babka and kokosh, two yeasted, filled breads. The latter, like Lebowitz, is of Hungarian origin. Our piece of chocolate babka ($2.30) and small slice of poppy seed kokosh ($3.90) were so sweet and rich that a few bites sufficed, though I found myself nibbling kokosh throughout the day.

Cheese crowns, another Cheskie's signature, come in two sizes of bunched pastry cradling lightly sweetened farmer's cheese. I made short work of a small ($1.50), appreciating its flaky bite.

A few blocks away, still in Mile End, we stepped back in time into Wilensky's Light Lunch (34 avenue Fairmount Ouest, 514-271-0247, wilenskys.com). From the pressed-tin ceiling to butt-burnished wooden stools, little has changed since 1952, when the Russian Jewish immigrant family moved their 20-year-old cigar store, barbershop and no-frills lunch counter to its current spot.

Sharon Wilensky, 65, is the third generation in charge. Or, as she put it dryly, "I'm the 'tag, you're it' person."

Almost every customer orders the Wilensky special invented by Sharon's father, Moe. For $4.57, a hamburger bun is griddled around slices of beef bologna and beef salami laced with yellow mustard. Soft, salty bites paired well with a sour pickle (87 cents) and a cherry soda made with housemade syrup ($1.45).

"They're less sweet and less carbonated than regular [sodas]," Sharon said. "That's all I'm gonna tell you."

Our next stop, in the St. Henri neighborhood, felt like the antithesis of Wilensky's. The hip Arthur's Nosh Bar (4621 rue Notre-Dame Ouest, 514-757-5190, arthursmtl.com) bills its menu as "reimagined Jewish fare" and almost always has a wait. Married chefs and co-owners Raegan Steinberg and Alex Cohen have cooked at some of Montréal's top restaurants, including Joe Beef and Liverpool House. Steinberg's family originated in Eastern Europe, Cohen's in Morocco.

Their breakfast and lunch restaurant, named for Steinberg's late father, significantly ups the nosh bar (sorry). We ordered the McArthur ($22), an impossibly crisp slab of chicken schnitzel sandwiched between buttery griddled challah and slathered with a Middle Eastern-influenced chile-and-herb skhug mayo.

I had to try the cottage cheese pancakes ($18), a childhood touchstone. They were incredible in a different way from my mother's: supremely fluffy and thick, with a browned, salt-flecked crust. She never served them with maple syrup, either.

We ate with our eyes at La Marguerite in the Côte-St.-Luc area (6630 rue Côte St. Luc, 514-488-4111, lamarguerite.ca) but picked up plenty for later. The retail arm of a kosher catering company is run by a second generation of Canadians with Moroccan Jewish heritage.

Romanow wrote her college thesis on Montréal's Moroccan Jewish community, who represent about 20 percent of the city's roughly 93,000 Jews. Most of them arrived during the late 1950s and early '60s, driven from their homeland by antisemitism and drawn by the promise of "the North American dream but in French," she said.

Two of La Marguerite's trio of sibling owners, Moshe, 49, and Maggy Chetrit, 45, said their family initially immigrated to Israel before coming to Montréal in 1977, where they opened the now-shuttered El Morocco restaurant.

Beautifully arranged cases held sweet and savory pastries, breads, and prepared foods, from couscous to fish with peppers and olives. Romanow bought her family dinner. I selected several salads and dips to bring home, including a tangy and intensely fruity tomato-and-bell pepper spread called taktouka, matboucha or salade cuite; and zaalouk, a cumin-accented eggplant, tomato and red pepper blend (both $6 per eight ounces).

A 10-minute drive back toward the city center brought us to the previously mentioned Snowdon Deli (5265 boulevard Décarie, 514-488-9129, snowdondeli.com). The old-school spot is in the Côtes-des-Neiges neighborhood near the 110-year-old Jewish Public Library, which claims North America's largest circulating collection of Judaica.

Founded in 1946, the deli is now owned by a grandson of one of the original Jewish owners, along with the daughter of their longtime Greek Canadian business partner and her husband.

The large menu, ranging from whitefish salad to knishes, will feel familiar to fans of New York Jewish delis. In honor of my mother, I ordered the chopped liver ($11). An ice cream scoop-size ball of liver spread came with a pile of caramelized onions, soft rye bread, and a beside-the-point iceberg lettuce and tomato salad. The savory, iron-y chicken liver, lightened with hard-cooked egg and fried onions, pulled me into a memory vortex, as did the well-made borscht ($5), which evoked my grandmother.

New to me was karnatzel ($3.25), a soft Romanian-style pepperoni stick served with a slice of rye in which to wrap it with yellow mustard. But next time: smoked meat.

A short walk away, we popped into Fresser's (5737 boulevard Décarie, 514-739-4034) for a cheese bagel. Romanow described it as a uniquely Montréal Jewish food with a name no one can explain, since it neither looks nor tastes like a bagel.

The horseshoe-shaped pastry is sometimes made with strudel or phyllo dough, she said, but always filled with lightly sweetened farmer's cheese. The Fresser's version ($3.25) recalled the Cheskie's cheese crown, but with a flakier dough studded with chunky sugar crystals.

As the day wound down, we headed west to Falafel St. Jacques in Lachine (345 rue St. Jacques, 514-595-7482, falafelstjacques.ca). The small store was as overstuffed as its falafel pitas, crowded with cans of Israeli olives, rows of salads, and fresh-baked challah and apple cake. Manager Saleh Seh told us that he is Arab Israeli and was hired many years ago by owner Ronen Baruch, also from Israel but Jewish.

Too overstuffed ourselves to eat a meal, we nibbled on cumin-forward, herby falafel balls and watched several customers tuck into falafel pitas ($15.50) overflowing with pickled turnips, fermented mango amba sauce and tahini.

For falafel, Romanow also recommends two more Jewish-owned spots: Falafel Yoni (falafelyoni.com), with locations in Le Plateau-Mont-Royal, Verdun and (seasonally) Atwater Market; and Sumac Restaurant (3618 Notre Dame Ouest, 514-935-1444, sumacrestaurant.com) in the St. Henri neighborhood near Atwater.

Since a previous visit to Sumac, I have dreamed of its sabich pita ($14), featuring fried eggplant, hard-cooked egg and pickles. Romanow especially likes the restaurant's salade cuite and carrots with preserved lemon (both $8/$12).

Such foods may not reflect my particular Jewish culinary roots, but they definitely feed my soul.

Correction, April 10, 2024: An earlier version of this story misidentified the origin of the karnatzel. It is Romanian.