Josh Freed on Poutine-Montreal Gazette, May 26

Poutine powering its way up the food chain and is poised to become our national dish.
The trendiest new Montreal food fashion is – poutine. Quebec’s low-status, high-calorie junk food has powered its way up the food chain and is poised to become our official national dish – and our most famous export since the snowmobile.
Three days ago, poutine was celebrated in a New York Times feature that called it a “gloppy, caloric, stick-to-your-ribs concoction … Montreal’s emblematic, problematic, comedic junk food … that goes deep into the Quebec psyche.’’
This was only days after The Gazette ran its own story about a fashionable Manhattan restaurant where poutine is suddenly the best-selling item.
Poutine is oozing its way across the continent’s menus from Toronto and Vancouver to Boston, Buffalo, Miami and L.A. It’s been praised everywhere from Gourmet magazine to Salon.com. But there’s more to the new poutine craze than cheese, fries and gravy.
Today, posh poutines feature everything from Gorgonzola cheese and Parisienne peppercorn sauce, to smoked meat and smoked salmon, to hamburger steak and poutine au boeuf bourguignon. And poutine fever is spreading faster than heart disease.
In Montreal, the college crowd has embraced it as the new 24-7 food fad, bumping out 99-cent pizza as the post-partying midnight snack.
The hottest Montreal Internet entertainment website is called Midnight Poutine.
Poutine is becoming a global Montreal symbol that has threatened to surpass smoked meat and bagels for coveted national food status. How did this low-end concoction become a gourmet fashion food?
Quebecers have always liked dangerous dining, so poutine was always an easy fit – a highwire, high-cholesterol adventure that’s the jaywalking of junk food. It recklessly combines three major artery-clogging ingredients, including barbecue sauce so thick it could get classified as motor oil in Ontario.
Here in the Plateau, you can’t throw a french fry these days without watching it land in fivepeppercorn gravy and Stilton cheese curds. Personally, I enjoy the Kamikaze poutine (with hot peppers, merguez and Tabasco) served at La Banquise – a popular 24-7, 22-flavour poutine palace that is mobbed after midnight.
But I’ve passed on their T-Rex poutine that adds bacon, hamburger steak, smoked sausage and pepperoni. For many years, sophisticated francophones hated poutine as an embarrassment that mocked Quebec culture – the joual of the food world. But in recent years, poutine has been rehabilitated as a camp food so disgusting, it’s beautiful.
Its big break came in 2004, when Montreal’s Au Pied du Cochon restaurant received rave reviews from U.S. chef Anthony Bourdain, who praised its arteryclogging foie gras poutine. Overnight, Quebec’s specialty went from low cuisine to haute poutine. Within weeks, I was invited to eat there by two major U.S. magazine writers who both loved the stuff. Soon, many top Montreal chefs were adding poutine to their menus, combining it with everything from truffle oil and blue cheese to caviar.
Visiting Torontonians were suddenly asking me where to get the stuff like it was a drug, though many wondered if they could replace the gravy and cheese with arugula, seaweed or sun-dried leechee nuts. By now, Russia was ruled by a president whose French name is pronounced Poutine, making the dish even more camp. So it’s no surprise it’s starting to conquer fashionable New York, where at least three well-known eateries serve it.
In our puritanical, cholesterolcounting world, poutine is the ultimate anti-fashion statement, a tasty, funny, gooey joke-on-aplate that says: “Live now – have bypass surgery later.”
What next? As the dish spreads globally, will we see other countries offering paella poutine, or fish-and-chips poutine, or sweet and sour pineapple chicken poutine? How about fettucine-Alfredo-and-sushi-enchilada-fusion poutine?
How long before someone discovers its secret health and ecological values – and comes up with a green poutine. Just how far can it soar?
On CBC’s series The Greatest Canadian Invention, poutine came in 10th, beating the BlackBerry, lacrosse, basketball, the snowblower, standard time and even the retractable beer carton handle. As its stature grows, will there be pressure to honour it with a Quebec landmark.
Maybe we could rename the Lachine Rapids the Poutine Rapids?
Meanwhile, last week graduating McGill student Rebecca Shapiro alerted me to the latest poutine development. Apparently, midnight-munching students are often torn between pizza and poutine – so an enterprising chef at Bella Dona Pizza on Mount Royal Ave. has solved the dilemma with a new creation – the “pizza-poutine.”
I dropped by at 1 a.m. Thursday, and the place was packed with students feasting on this new concoction. The greying cook, Husein, told me he first came up with a french fries pizza several months ago – and then in a recent “Eureka!” moment, he thought to add cheese glops and gravy.
The result is so successful it outsells the all-dressed pizza, Husein declares proudly. So if you’re too old for rock-climbing and too scared for skydiving, there is still one truly daring thrill anyone can experience.
Visit Bella Dona and try Extreme Poutine. (821 words)