Finding the best poutine in Vancouver–Introduction
Since I’m from Québec, poutine is my very own national dish. But good poutine is hard to find outside of the Belle Province, and I sometimes find myself craving this delicious mix of fries, gravy and squeaky cheese.
In Edmonton I was lucky to live a block away from a poutine place, owned by a Québec expat like me, for the last two months of my stay there. It was really good poutine; my boyfriend thought it was better than a lot of poutine back home as well.
So when I moved to Vancouver, I thought I would try all the poutine I could find to discover the best poutine in town. Poutine is not necessarily hard to make, but it’s hard to make
a good one if you don’t know what you’re doing (e.g., grated mozarella is a big no no, people at the Uvic SUB food court…). Anyway, so here’s a list of the criteria I have for good poutine:
- Fresh cut fries. There’s nothing worse than poutine made from frozen fries. It’s easy to spot, and literally ruins the dish.
Poutine from La Banquise, a famous poutine place in Montréal. Credit: Sjschen on Wikipedia
- Light, herby gravy. Out here in the West, I usually find beef gravy instead of poutine gravy. Poutine gravy is lighter and tastes of herbs, not beef. Consider yourself warned.
- Fresh cheese curds. The secret to squeaky cheese curds: it must be eaten within 24 hours of production, otherwise all the squeakiness disappears and you’re stuck with something that tastes more or less like regular cheddar. Fresh cheese curds is the most essential ingredient in my book.
I’m a traditionalist, so for this experiment I will only have the traditional cheese and gravy poutine, no extras or variations. In any case, it’s the only way to really evaluate the quality of a poutine.
If you know anywhere that serves poutine (good or bad) please let me know here or on Twitter @anabellebf and I will do my best to visit and evaluate it for you!
Part 4: Library Square Public House
Didn†t get to crack open any Canadian beer, Moosehead and LaBatt Blue being my favorites, but I did get to chow down on this delicious relationship of fries, gravy and cheese.