The Main, famed Montreal smoked meat institution beloved by Trudeau and Cohen, closes down

The Main Deli Steak House, a smoked meat institution frequented by prime ministers and poets, closed its doors permanently this week. 

The windows of the iconic eatery, whose sign has hung over St-Laurent Boulevard — a road long referred to as the Main, the restaurant's namesake — since 1974, were papered over on Monday and a note in the window thanked its customers for their years of patronage. 

"Had I known they were closing for good, I would have gone in for last meal," said Louis Rastelli, the director of Arcmtl Archive Montréal, a history archive, and a former regular at The Main. 

"But I looked in at the menu and the prices and thought, 'No, it's not the same as it was. It's a lot more expensive.'"

Restaurateurs say the loss of the Main Deli is a sign of the times: labour shortages, gentrification, high food prices and pandemic closures are squeezing the restaurant industry.

But it was not entirely out of the blue, according to Rastelli and other smoked meat aficionados. Over the past decade, The Main had begun closing earlier, charging more and, controversially, not smoking its own brisket. 

"I was just there like three days ago," Rastelli said. "Walking in front of it and looking inside, it was quite dead. I really got the impression they went way too high with the prices."

Rastelli recalled eating at The Main in the 1980s while working a summer job at the Warshaw Supermarket across the street. Back then, The Main Deli was open 24 hours a day, serving midnight meals to party-goers coming from bars along St-Laurent Boulevard alongside workers grabbing breakfast before a shift in one of the area's many businesses. 

In those days, Leonard Cohen famously frequented The Main. Philip Varvaro, who owns Delibee's, a popular smoked meat shop in Pointe-Claire, recalls working long hours at the restaurant, when his father, Peter Varvaro, owned it. 

His father made practically everything by hand, Philip recalled in an interview on Tuesday. "He made the pickles, he made the pimentos. He made everything," he said. "There's a lot of memories."

The family sold the restaurant in 2013 after Peter Varvaro died.

Philip said he was in shock when he learned the news about the closure on Monday. He wasn't sure why The Main had closed down, but he said it had been a hard few years for restaurant owners. 

CBC has reached out to the owners but has not heard back. 

Over the years, just as St-Laurent Boulevard changed, so did The Main Deli.