Sad news from North Toronto: Coleman’s Deli — my childhood go-to eatery — has closed after half a century of operation at Bathurst and Lawrence.

Kate mentioned she’d read Zane Caplansky’s post about finding the place shuttered; he’d been following up on a post over at Save the Deli that first sounded the alarm. The restaurant’s website just thanks people for their patronage and brings the curtain down with no further explanation.

Dammit.

Look, I know about entropy. I know you can never count on the things you love sticking around for the duration. And I know that economic times are harder than they’ve been in decades. But they had the best knish in the city, and my grandfather loved their tongue sandwiches, and I’m not ready for them to be gone.

It somehow seems like an extra twist of the knife for this to happen on the second anniversary of my grandfather’s death. Or maybe it’s just me being forty, and fixating on all the things that are behind me rather than ahead of me. Family. Friends. Pets. The winter will do that to you.

Ah, fuck it. I’m going to Caplansky’s tonight, and I’m going to have a sandwich and a knish, and I am going to raise a glass to the past.

And then we’ll see about the future.