Arthurs Nosh Bar is a popular Montreal brunch spot, opened in 2016 by husband-and-wife team Raegan Steinberg and Alex Cohen and named after Steinberg’s late father. This new cookbook, Arthurs: Home of the Nosh, is co-written by Steinberg, Cohen, and Evelyne Eng and contains more than one hundred and fifteen recipes for the restaurant’s delicious-looking dishes, presented with humor, warmth, and family stories recounting everything from Steinberg and Cohen’s early courtship to memories of their parents.
The introduction addresses what it means to run a “Jewish restaurant.” At least in Montreal, the authors write, a recognizably Jewish restaurant is Ashkenazi-forward and means lox, bagels, and matzo ball soup. While those dishes are served at the restaurant and included in this cookbook, Steinberg and Cohen also wanted to put Sephardic recipes on the menu to showcase Cohen’s heritage, with dishes that originated in North Africa and the Middle East, such as Moroccan Salade Cuite, Dafina and Sfenj. Cohen in particular is a “big believer in generational food memory” — that the foods and flavors our ancestors loved are passed down to us; in short, cook what you know and love.
Arthurs presents both Jewish deli favorites (all-beef salami, bagel and schmear, latkes) along with brunch staples like waffles, pancakes, and sandwiches of all kinds, plus sauces, Shabbat dishes, desserts, drinks, and more.
By the authors’ own admission, some of the recipes are quite tricky — for instance, an all-consuming chocolate pie and granola that has three separate parts (and “no, you cannot just combine all ingredients together at the beginning”). At the same time, the recipes are clearly written and effectively signposted, with cheeky icons like a timer (when a recipe is especially time-consuming) or a devil (when a recipe is fiendishly intricate). In fact, the entire cookbook is quite cheeky, and occasionally profane, but always in good spirits — sometimes a recipe just turns into a “f*cking disaster” — and that’s okay!
