Linny’s Luncheonette : Big Hug Hospitality’s Insane Takeout Deli

A few steps from Linny’s, a smaller door opens onto the most casual concept in the Big Hug Hospitality group. Linny’s Luncheonette is a takeout sandwich counter, and it exists to do exactly what its neighbour cannot: feed the block at lunch.

Linny’s does not serve lunch, and that gap bothered David Schwartz long before he had a solution. A steakhouse, by its nature, is not the easiest daytime stop. Beef is expensive, the room is built for a longer meal, and the price per person climbs quickly. David wanted a different lane for the neighbourhood: somewhere a guest could walk in, order a sandwich and walk back out for under thirty dollars. Linny’s Luncheonette was the answer. The format is handheld, the menu is short, and the craft is the same as the steakhouse next door.

The Five-Day Brine

The pastrami sandwich is the headline order, and it earns the room. The meat is brined for five days, rubbed with the kitchen’s house spice blend, and smoked for twelve to fourteen hours before it is hand-cut to order onto fresh rye. It is the dish most first-time guests come for, and it sets the tone for everything else on the menu. The pastrami is also exactly the same pastrami that anchors the prime rib slot at Linny’s.

David’s personal favourite is not the pastrami. It is the pickle and potato sandwich, the sleeper of the menu. Built around pickles fermented in house and potatoes treated with the care of a steakhouse side, the sandwich earns its place every time. The smoked whitefish and the brined, smoked turkey round out the savoury options. The chocolate chip cookie, kept deliberately simple, is the other quiet star. It is the kind of detail David quietly insists on: a small menu where no item is allowed to feel like an afterthought, and where the items most regulars eventually order are the ones that did not announce themselves on a first visit.

The team made the menu small on purpose. As David puts it, they wanted no room for a wrong turn. Every item gets the same care that the longer menu at Linny’s gets: knishes hand-rolled, fish smoked on site, turkey brined, smoked and sliced by hand.

The Patio That Opened the Format

The luncheonette is takeout-first by design, but the outdoor patio out front, recently opened, lets a guest stay put with a sandwich, a pickle and a coffee. The format is casual, fast and unfussy, with none of the formality of the steakhouse next door. It is the kind of place you walk into without thinking, and walk out of holding a pastrami sandwich worth the detour.

What Connects It to Linny’s Next Door

The two addresses are not just neighbours. They are different schedules of the same restaurant. The luncheonette uses the meat, fish, bread and pickles cured and made next door. A guest can taste the deli tradition behind Linny’s in a quicker, cheaper form. For David, the luncheonette is the proof that the steakhouse’s craft works at any price point: the menu is shorter and the room is smaller, but the rigour is identical.

For a Toronto neighbourhood that already knew how to dine well in the evening on Ossington, the luncheonette closes the loop. Lunch on this stretch will not look the same again.

Written by Fabie Lubin
Photography by Scott Usheroff (Craving Curator) / Daniel Neuhaus

Updated on May 13, 2026

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