Poutine

A word, if I may, about poutine.
In case you didn't know, poutine is a traditional dish from Quebec made from fries, fresh cheese curds, and thick gravy.

I love poutine. It's so friggin' good. The best kind of poutine is found in Quebec. I'm not a snob mind you - there's lots of great poutine elsewhere too. But in my experience, the best poutines you can find are from the roadside casse-croûtes that dot the Quebec landscape. Each diner will have different potatoes, different gravy recipes, and especially different cheese curds from different farms.

My absolute favourite poutine of all time, without exception, comes from a little place known colloquially as l'orange, in a town that's about half an hour southeast of Montreal. You can see why it's called that if you look at the picture of the restaurant below:

So yeah, these guys make the best poutine I've ever had and I make sure that I go there every time I visit my grandma. It's ridiculously cheap and it comes in huge portions. There's so much sauce and the cheese is just the perfect consistency with the potatoes being a golden brown and - oh, you just have to see it to believe it:

Typical poutine from l'orange

Yeah. Take that in. They also make, unsurprisingly, really good orange soda.

So what if you're nowhere near Quebec and want to try poutine. What can you do? Luckily, poutine has grown in popularity over the past few years and many places offer their own take on the québécois dish.
In my opinion, there are some places that do it right and others that are junk.

Generally, places like Smoke's Poutinerie are okay. They're kind of gimmicky with all sorts of weird special takes on poutine like dill pickle and mustard or chili beef poutine. And generally, pretty terrible value considering it's mostly fries and little meat anyway. But on a late night, Smoke's will do just fine.

Avoid McDonald's. Oh my god. They came out with their "poutine" a couple years ago and it's absolutely horrendous. The gravy is this thin, gooey grey and tastes nothing like the rich creamy flavour you'd get from a real poutine. The fries are just the regular McDonald's fries which soak up the gravy and turn soggy real quick. They do not do well in a poutine base - look at how thick the fries are in the picture above in comparison. Surprisingly, the one thing McDicks gets right is the cheese curds. I don't know where or how they source them in the middle of Toronto but they were legit. Respect.

For fast food poutine, in my experience, the best place is Harvey's. They've been offering it for a long time, way before most other companies, and there's a reason it's still on the menu. It's pretty good and I especially like their gravy. Their burgers are tight too.

A&W is another decent place, plus you can get a gnarly root beer.

There used to be a brunch place near where I live that had these mega bowls of poutine. And they had a promotion on certain days where it was buy 1 get 1 free. So their large poutines were like 10 bucks, and they were MASSIVE. And absolutely delicious. They had breakfast poutines with eggs and bacon too, which were good. Unfortunately, they closed down soon after they changed their deal to buy 1 get 1 half price.

The food trucks on St. George at the UofT campus make great poutines at good prices. Perfect for starving students.

In Quebec, different regions will insist that their poutine is the best. Anyone from Quebec City will tell you that Ashton's makes the best poutine, while someone from Montreal might argue for La Banquise. Personally, I think the best poutine comes from a small place that has a lot of history. In my case, it's l'orange and I can't wait to go back.