Zane Caplansky, owner of Caplansky’s Delicatessen in Toronto, makes celebrated smoked meat sandwiches. He also used to run a chai stall in Uttar Pradesh. I know, right? I caught up with him one evening to hear his wild stories, look at his pictures, and pester him about serving chai at the deli. Here’s what I found out…
What led you to visit India?
I’d been working and travelling for about three and a half years. I had started in South East Asia and ended up in Chengdu where I got a visa to visit Tibet. When I was in Lhasa, I met a man named Steve from Kitchener, Ontario.
Steve was a lot like me – we both started out very fat and had gotten very thin while travelling. Steve says to me, “Well, what’re you looking for?” And I said, “I want to learn yoga and I want to learn Indian cookery.” And he said, “I know just the place for both of us, at least for the cooking.”
How did you end up in Uttar Pradesh?
Steve drew me a map of this little village in Uttar Pradesh called Bultabira, which is 2 or 3 km north of Almora. So I went from Lhasa to Katmandu to Bareilly to Delhi to Almora. There was a general strike during that time and it was very hard to get buses. He told me the name of a guesthouse on the main road, and it was a small miracle I found the place because it was the worst map anybody had ever drawn. But I did actually find the place and everybody was amazed because nobody had come and gone for weeks because of the strike.
The guesthouse was full so I had to stay in the main house that was owned by Kim Singh Bhist and his family. They had two water buffalo that were housed on the lower level of their home. They tied the buffalo up outside, they swept the pen, put a bed inside, and that was my home.
Who taught you about Indian cooking?
I told Kim Singh that I wanted to learn Indian cooking and he said, well, just go in the kitchen and watch my wife and my mother and they’ll teach you. But as a foreigner I had no caste and the last person Kim Singh’s mother wanted in her kitchen was me. I lasted all of forty five seconds in the kitchen. I went to Kim Singh and told him this wasn’t going to work. So he said, “I’ll teach you.”
Tell me about Kim Singh.
This is an interesting story. As a young man, Kim Singh went to his father and said, “Daddy, working on a farm is giving me headaches. I want to open a chai shop.” And his dad said, “No problem, as soon as you have enough money you can do what you want with it.” Kim Singh realized he wasn’t going to save enough by farming so he became a house-man for foreign families – American, British, and German – and learned how to cook both foreign and Indian food.
So, Kim Singh saved his money and opened a chai shop close to Almora, near the army base, and it did extremely well. Every time a foreigner would walk by he could call out to him in English or German. That ability was a huge advantage: “Come my friend sit down, have some chai, channa, puri. Where are you staying?” “Oh, I’m looking for a hotel room.” “You may be more comfortable staying with my family.” The opportunity of staying with a real Indian family was impossible to resist. Then, the true stroke of genius, they would ask what he charged and he would say, “You know what? Whatever you think is right.” When I found him he no longer had the chai stall but he had a guesthouse and a farm, and was a prosperous businessman. And he was going to teach me how to cook.
How soon after you moved in did you start the shop? What was your setup like?
About two weeks. I went with Kim Singh to Delhi to buy some supplies. Pots and pans. Spices. Our entire mission was really to go get coffee at the coffee exchange in Connaught Place. I had this idea that I’d make coffee for people at a café in the Himalayas, which was an idea that was beaten out of me. I bought a hand-grinder and wanted to serve Turkish coffee, which is unfiltered so if you drink the grounds it tastes terrible. But the Germans kept drinking the whole cup and… [makes choking noises]
My original room became too busy so I took over a room next door that became my kitchen/bedroom with a propane tank and two burners. I had a tawa where I would make chapattis, a mat on the floor that I used as a bed, and a fireplace. I bought a bunch of cushions to sit on and hung saris from the ceiling. It was very basic but it was fun. We used to roll joints by emptying out cigarettes and stay up late smoking charas, talking, and drinking chai. We had a view of Trishul and Nanda Devi, two of the five or six highest peaks in the world. It was such a spectacular lifestyle from a climate perspective, and such an exceptional experience.
What was on the menu?
We had this metal box that used to serve as an oven. We’d put it into the fireplace and we’d build a fire around it. Impossible to maintain any kind of a temperature with it but we actually did bake bread. Every morning Kim Singh’s daughter and sister would bring water and buffalo milk. His son would take my order for what I needed from the market.
Whatever milk I didn’t use that day for chai, I would collect and let it spoil and separate. Then I would pour it through cheesecloth and hang it up overnight and in the morning I would have cream cheese. I’d add some salt, garlic, and basil. I used to make peanut butter — take peanuts and roast them. I would take oranges and take their peels off and make marmalade. I made muesli from nuts and oats – roast them with honey. So we’d have dahi, honey, and muesli for breakfast. When it got colder, I’d put whole black peppercorns in the chai because it gives off warmth in the throat.
For lunch, I would make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. The girls would have breakfast or lunch with me. I was a bit of a daycare centre. Everyday around 2 o’ clock, Kim Singh would come and he would teach me different elements of dinner. So, we would make daal, subzi, rice, chapatti, salads, something sweet as well. Every day was a different set of dishes, usually about six. People would tell me in advance if they were coming so I’d know how many people to make dinner for.
I was vegetarian. I survived very happily on a vegetarian diet and I felt like my body… well, you can see how good I looked. [Points to photograph]
You looked like you needed to eat meat.
[Laughs] When I came home my family was very shocked. They’ve known me looking like this [points to himself]. But all my bodily functions worked really well. Aches and pains, colds and sores – stuff like that never really happened. We were getting water from a mountain stream!
Who were your customers?
Every day there was a collection of characters at this chai stall.
There was a sadhu who Dale [a guest; an Australian taxi driver] met in Delhi and followed him to the guesthouse who slept on my floor for a week. When he left he stole Dale’s radio. The sadhu baba only ate khichri with no garlic and no onions. Kim Singh treated him as a bit of a mystic. I think Kim Singh’s idea of spirituality is someone who can predict the future. So he pointed to me and asked the sadhu baba, “How long will he live?” And the sadhu said something in Hindi. Kim Singh said something back and there was a long silence. I asked what he’d said and Kim Singh says “54. Dead.” To be honest with you, I don’t remember the exact number but Kim Singh was certainly unhappy about it.
There was this one German guy, Jurgen Knor. He was paying Kim Singh to build a guesthouse for him. The workers would all come to me for chai and cookies. They’d eat eggs a lot – scrambled with chillies. “Unde banao?” Sure. “Chai banao?” OK.
Do you remember much Hindi?
Now I can only remember ek, do, teen, chaar, paanch. Kitna paisa hai? Little words like dhobiwalla and chaiwalla. It’s actually quite a simple language if you try and learn a few words everyday especially for me because I was living and working in the culture. I knew all the food words. When I came back, remembering the names became more challenging in English.
What did you call the shop?
I used to call it Kim Singh’s Café. It wasn’t the first Caplansky’s. [laughs] In fact, my name wasn’t even Caplansky back then. I was born Zane Caplan. My great grandfather was Caplansky and he shortened the name to Caplan, I believe, to sound less Jewish. And I changed it back…to sound more Jewish!
How do you relate your experience in India to your experience here?
I’ve done a lot of different things that led me to places that didn’t bring me satisfaction, and when I sought authenticity – who I really am – I found genuine and useful satisfaction. This should have been a clue to me because I was never happier than when I was making chai in a chai shop. If you don’t feel it you can’t pretend it.
There’s something genuinely satisfying about being hospitable. To have somebody come to my place; to give them a choice of what they want; to give them what they ask for; to provide them with an experience – it gives me a lot of pleasure. I had it then and I have it now. I lost it for many years in between and placed a higher premium on wealth and fame, and trying to live to somebody else’s sense of who or what I’m meant to be.
Three years ago, almost to the day, I decided to open this delicatessen in the Monarch Tavern. I had to think of a name. In India, I didn’t name the shop after myself but here I felt as if I had to in order to be true to myself. I thought that Zane’s Deli doesn’t sound right and Caplan’s kind of sounds like a furniture store. Caplansky – now that’s a good deli name. So, I legally went through the process of changing my name in honour of my 40th birthday and started making smoked meat sandwiches.
What’re the odds that we’ll find chai at Caplansky’s?
You know, it’s funny that you should ask that because I’ve just changed spice merchants. The new guy, I was just at his plant and they were making chai while I was there. He offered me some and it totally transported me. It tasted almost exactly like the chai we used to make in India. So, I might actually buy their chai mixture and try to use it in the deli. What’re the odds? At this point probably 60/40.
