8/30/2023 0 Comments Le petit journal alfred dreyfus“We’re doing a pea soup, but instead of using bacon, we use kosher salami,” he said.īut the name Dreyfus is hardly a neutral way to evoke the intersection of France and Jewishness. In that sense, the restaurant’s name is itself a cultural fusion, just like the food. He attended Jewish day school in Montreal and now identifies as “a very cultural Jew,” while his great-grandfather was, he tells me, a cantor and founder of Congregation Beth-El in Mount Royal, Que. “I wanted something that bridged the history of France and French cooking and the romanticism of France and Paris and all these great little towns with my Jewish background,” he explained. On one level, Kolomeir simply wanted a restaurant name that pointed to France and Judaism. I spoke with Kolomeir over the phone, to find out how Toronto wound up with a bistro named after the Dreyfus Affair. But Zach Kolomeir, Dreyfus’ chef and owner, makes a surprisingly persuasive case for this unexpected – and by all accounts unprecedented – form of fusion. It turns out that it was, in fact, named after the notorious Dreyfus Affair, the one that split French public opinion in two at the end of the 19th century the one rumoured to have inspired Theodor Herzl to make the transition from a journalist, to the founder of modern Zionism.Īs a rule, French restaurants are, along with French clothing stores and effortless-French-girl Instagram accounts, destinations for unapologetic Francophilia, not for contemplating the more grim aspects of French history. And the restaurant’s bio on Instagram says “ J’accuse…!” Could it be that Dreyfus?Ī glance inside revealed a framed front page of Le Petit Journal with the iconic 1895 image of Jewish-French army officer Alfred Dreyfus’ military degradation, after being falsely accused of treason. Cashiering of Alfred Dreyfus by Henri MayerĪ few months ago, I passed a restaurant on Harbord Street in Toronto with a curious name: Dreyfus.
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