Adventures in Poutine

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This poutine is simply fries, gravy and cheese curds, at L'Orignal, in Montreal.
This poutine is simply fries, gravy and cheese curds, at L’Orignal, in Montreal.

Here I am in the land of poutine.  Never heard of it?  You are probably in the majority, because the only place I’ve seen poutine regularly appear on menus is up here in Quebec. Some times it will be a novelty item, available far and few between in New England, but it’s not something very common.

Today at a fancy lunch, my hosts wondered why that is. I mean, can’t we buy the ingredients? French fries, brown gravy, and cheese curds.  And in many cases, big chunks of chicken, duck or beef are added in.  But it must be those curds…I have never seen cheese curds in the store, and even thought I bet I could make them, I just don’t see that happening.

This poutine came with rich duck and the rest of the familiar ingredients, at the Fairmont Tremblanc. Very very good!
This poutine came with rich duck and the rest of the familiar ingredients, at the Fairmont Tremblanc. Very very good!

Pierre, our host here in Mt Tremblanc, shared a story about an American TV star who was here for some sort of food network production about local foods. Of course, he had to have poutine, and they brought him to a big bar where there was a selection of everything you can imagine to put on top of the fries, curds and gravy….beef, chicken, pork, duck, and this guy just poured it all on, I mean ALL of it, the way someone who was going on camera would do. Later on, the TV star felt very ill, the poutine clearly got the best of him.

Like so many regional specialities, everyone claims to have the best poutine across this big province. And so far, they’ve all been pretty, pretty good, to my New England tastes at least.