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That sense of loss was weighing on writer David Sax when he popped into Yitz’s the other day for a tongue sandwich. Sax grew up near the deli, where his family were regulars. His school lunches were made on Yitz’s Challah bread. Salami was his favourite. Sax’s 2009 book, Save the Deli, chronicled the decline of the deli, a trend that has only accelerated.

“People are attracted to Toronto because of the aggressive opportunity here,” he says. “But what you are losing is the city’s soul — because you are not rooted in anything — and so if everything is just a Hero Burger, a liquor store and a bank, well, what’s you sense of place?”

At my age, I wasn’t going to relocate

For almost 50 years, Yitz’s was The Place in this part of north Toronto. Somewhere with good food, but also somewhere familiar, pulling people in while serving as a reminder that a neighbourhood’s life isn’t lived behind closed doors but alongside one’s neighbours, kibitzing at the local deli.

“Whoever we grabbed up, we had them for life,” Araujo says.

There was the tailor (lox and cream cheese); the art collector, (Montreal smoked meat); the author (tongue sandwich); the extremely wealthy man (potato latkes) and the middle-aged lawyer, who pops by, now and again, to pick up a box of cigars for his 87-year-old celebrity architect father. (Yitz’s, in true deli style, features a humidor next to the cash register.)

People come because they have always come.

“So many Jewish celebrations are around the table,” Silver said. “If we were still to be open for Chanukah, for example, we would sell thousands upon thousands of latkes: big ones, small ones, thin ones, fat ones.”