When The Pig Came Home: The Junction’s Deli for Smoked Meat, Porchetta and Patties

When The Pig Came Home in The Junction has been making sandwiches for more than a decade, started in an apartment kitchen with a charcoal grill in the alley, and now sells thousands of sandwiches a week out of a counter so small the owners will tell you they make it work with two ovens and three burners. They don’t have investors. They don’t take meetings about expansion. They’ve built a deli on their own terms, and it shows in every bite.

From an Apartment Kitchen to a Brick and Mortar

Ryan Gatner and his wife Kimberly Hannam started the business in 2012 at the farmer’s market in their neighbourhood. Both trained in fine dining, both decided early on that fine dining wasn’t for them. They wanted to use the same ingredients and techniques but apply them to food everyone can eat. Sandwiches. Patties. Real things.

They didn’t have a commercial kitchen, so they cooked out of their apartment. He was getting into barbecue then, so a lot of the cooking happened on a charcoal and wood grill in the alleyway and on the deck. They eventually got the kitchen wired for electricity and bought enough fridges to fill the apartment. Then they would haul everything to the market on Saturday mornings.

The first year was about figuring out the formula. The second year, they expanded into more farmer’s markets across the city. Four years of that, and in 2016 they opened a shop down the street from where they had started. The Junction has been home ever since.

Where the Name Came From

Kimberly was pregnant, lying on the bed on a summer day, and the name just came out of her mouth. They wrote it down. Never overthought it. It’s long, it confuses people sometimes, and they don’t care. It fits.

A Menu Built on Two Heritages

What gives the menu its identity is the meeting of Ryan and Kimberly’s backgrounds. Ryan was born in St. John’s and raised in Toronto. Kimberly is first-generation Canadian, with her mom from Jamaica. The deli is built where those two worlds overlap, and where Toronto’s own sandwich culture sits.

The early menu was small and deliberately Toronto. Peameal sandwiches, because peameal is a Toronto thing. Porchetta, because the Italian community here makes porchetta a Toronto thing too. Smoked meat in a Montreal style, but built with beef cheek instead of brisket. Jerk chicken, because the Jamaican population in Toronto is significant and Kimberly’s heritage is part of the deli’s DNA. They were also doing butchery in the early days, sourcing grass-fed meats, making sausages, dry-aging beef. By 2018 or 2019 they had scaled the butchery back and let the sandwiches lead.

In 2019, the smoked meat switched from beef cheek to brisket. Brisket was the more popular cut, and the cheek was too niche to keep on the menu full-time. Then last year, around Thanksgiving, the cheek came back, this time as a Toronto-style pastrami rather than a Montreal-style smoke. The rub is sweeter, less peppery, less smoky, and the dish stands apart from the brisket version on the menu.

What to Order

When asked what first-timers should order, Ryan has a clear answer. The beef cheek Reuben is his number one recommendation. The pastrami rub is the deli’s own, the meat is rich and slow-cooked.

The other half of his ideal first visit is the ackee and saltfish patty. It carries the deli’s Jamaican thread, but it also carries a deep historical thread Ryan loves to talk about. Ackee and saltfish is Jamaica’s national dish, and the saltfish in it traces back to Newfoundland cod fishermen who, during Prohibition, traded salted cod to Jamaica in exchange for rum barrels they used to make screech back home. That same saltfish became the cornerstone of Jamaica’s national dish. Ryan, born in St. John’s, finds the cross-cultural circle of it personally meaningful, and it’s now his favourite patty on the menu.

If neither of those is your speed, the house porchetta is a great pick, and Ryan says people always come back after that one. The Jamaican beef patties are a permanent reason to stop by. Toronto runs on patties. They’re in subway stations, in convenience stores, all over the city, and When The Pig Came Home makes some of the best.

For the holidays and bigger gatherings, the deli sells larger portions of brisket, porchetta, and jerk chicken for catering. The smoked jerk turkeys around the holidays are a customer favourite year after year.

A Small Room with a Big Output

The shop is intentionally tiny. There’s a checkout kiosk at the front, two benches that seat four, and a small table with four chairs. It’s a takeout business by design. 

The atmosphere is easy-going and unfussy. The music shifts with the day, indie rock, soul, old-school reggae. Regulars get greeted by name. It’s the kind of neighbourhood deli where the relationship goes both ways.

When The Pig Came Home is the kind of deli every city needs. Honest food, real heritage, and sandwiches that punch way above the size of the kitchen.

For more spots to enjoy an excellent sandwich, check out our list of the best sandwiches in Toronto!

Écrit par Daniel Neuhaus
Photographié par Scott Usheroff

Updated on 8 September 2026

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