Poutine

• 1. Introduction

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  Poutine, a heap of french fries and cheese curds under hot brown gravy, may owe its name to a shouted complaint in 1957. In the Quebec town of Warwick, a regular customer asked café owner Fernand Lachance to drop a handful of cheese curds into a take-out bag of fries. Lachance is said to have exclaimed, "ça va faire une maudite poutine!" In English, that means "It will make a damn mess!" Whether the story is true is still argued. Several restaurants in the Centre-du-Québec region claim the invention, and nobody has settled the matter. The dish went on to lead an unusual life. For years it was a punchline aimed at Quebec. Later it became a badge of pride, a festival favourite and an object of scholarly dispute over who is entitled to call it theirs. This documentary asks where poutine came from and why its cheese must be so fresh. It also asks how a roadside snack reached expensive menus, and what happens when a regional dish is claimed by a whole country.

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• 2. Who Made It First

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  Jean-Paul Roy, owner of the Le Roy Jucep drive-in in Drummondville, began serving fries, gravy and curds together in 1958. Some customers had already been ordering a side of cheese curds to add to their fries and gravy themselves. In 1964 Roy put the combination on the menu as "fromage-patate-sauce". That name felt too long, so it was changed to poutine. The new name drew on a cook nicknamed "Ti-Pout" and on a slang word for "pudding". The restaurant displays a copyright registration certificate from the Canadian Intellectual Property Office, which alludes to Roy having invented poutine.

  In Princeville, the restaurant La Petite Vache tells a gentler story. Customers there mixed cheese curds into their fries, and the habit earned a place on the menu. One version came with gravy and was called the "Mixte".

  Back in Warwick, Lachance ran Le Café Idéal, which later became Le Lutin qui rit. Its 1957 menu already listed a dish called poutine. He served it on a plate, and from 1962 he added hot gravy to keep it warm.

  Canadian food researcher Sylvain Charlebois gives the title of birthplace to Warwick but names Roy the true inventor. His reasoning is that Le Roy Jucep was the first to sell poutine with all three ingredients combined, in 1964. The Oxford Companion to Cheese takes another view. It says the real inventors were not chefs at all but the customers who chose to add curds to their fries.

  The word itself is just as slippery. The Dictionnaire historique du français québécois lists 15 meanings of poutine in Québécois and Acadian French, and most of them are kinds of food. The sense of fries with cheese and gravy is dated to 1982 in English, while other senses have been in use since at least 1810. Merriam-Webster reports a popular theory that the word comes from a Québécois slang word for "mess". Others link it to the English word pudding.

  The Dictionnaire allows that poutine may simply be a French-ified pudding, but it finds a different origin more likely. It points to regional languages of France, citing the Provençal poutingo, meaning "bad stew", and poutité, meaning "hodgepodge" or "crushed fruit or foods". It also cites poutringo, "mixture of various things", in Languedocien, and poutringue or potringa, "bad stew", in Franche-Comté. If that theory holds, the fries-with-cheese-and-gravy meaning is probably unrelated to pudding.

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• 3. Uptown Climb

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  For decades, poutine lived in small diners that Quebecers call cantines or casse-croûtes. It turned up in pubs, in ice hockey arenas and at roadside chip wagons called cabanes à patates, which literally means "potato shacks". It remained a country snack of Quebec's dairy region. In 1969, Ashton Leblond carried it to Quebec City in his food truck, a business that grew into the Chez Ashton fast-food chain. La Banquise began serving it in Montreal in the early 1970s, and the Burger King chain followed in 1983.

  The cheese used by later sellers was inferior, and the dish's reputation declined. Poutine came to be seen as an unsophisticated backwoods creation, or as junk food for the end of a night of drinking. Montreal chefs cooked it to feed their own staff but did not dare print it on their menus.

  In the 1990s, some cooks tried to raise its standing with baked potatoes and duck stock. The real shift came in November 2001, when Martin Picard of the bistro Au Pied de Cochon began serving a foie gras poutine. Customers and food critics praised it. Chefs in Toronto and Vancouver took notice. Mark McEwan served lobster poutine at his restaurant Bymark, and Jamie Kennedy offered braised beef poutine at the restaurant that bears his name.

  Over the following decade, poutine won a place in every kind of restaurant, from haute cuisine to fast food, and it spread across Canada and abroad. By the early 2010s it was extremely trendy, with poutineries multiplying in cities such as Toronto. That craze brought stories linking poutine to romance. It also brought the IBM Watson Cognitive Cooking Poutine Event, where a computer generated unique poutine recipes based on the demographics of Toronto and Montreal. Such growth created a practical puzzle, because the dish depends on an ingredient that loses its best qualities in under a day.

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• 4. Squeak And Gravy

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  A fresh cheese curd squeaks when chewed, and that sound is a large part of what makes poutine poutine. Air and moisture seep out of curds as time passes, which alters their acidity. The proteins then lose their elasticity, and the curds lose both their complex texture and their squeak. Curds should be less than a day old, which means the kitchen must sit close to a dairy.

  Montreal lies 60 km from a cheese plant in Mirabel. Even so, restaurants and specialty cheese shops outside dairy regions may not sell enough curds to justify daily deliveries. Canadian food safety practices also require curds to be refrigerated within 24 hours, and the chill suppresses their texture. The answer has been the specialist poutinerie. A busy one may use 100 kg of curds per day. Those too far from a dairy sometimes make their own cheese curds on site, in batches every few hours.

  The traditional fries are of medium thickness and sometimes fried twice, so the inside stays soft while the outside turns crisp. The gravy is classically a light, thin beef or chicken gravy, somewhat salty and mildly spiced with a hint of pepper. A sauce brune, which combines chicken and beef stock, also fits the tradition. Grocery stores in Quebec, Ontario and the Maritimes sell poutine sauce, called mélange à sauce poutine, in jars, cans and powdered packets. Some grocery chains offer their own house brands, and many stores and restaurants provide a vegetarian gravy.

  Order and timing protect the fries. The curds and gravy go on immediately before serving. Hot gravy is usually poured over room-temperature curds, so they warm without melting completely. Thin gravy lets every fry be coated, and a deep serving dish acts as a basket that keeps the fries hot. Controlling temperature, timing and the order of the ingredients is described as an essential part of the experience. When curds cannot be had, mozzarella may serve instead, and cooks in Saskatchewan commonly use it shredded.

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• 5. Variations And Borders

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  La Banquise in Montreal is credited with much of poutine's innovation and popularization, and its menu lists dozens of varieties. Many begin with the traditional recipe and add sausage, chicken, bacon, brisket or Montreal-style smoked meat, with the gravy adjusted for balance. Chez Ashton, the Quebec City chain, is known for the Galvaude, topped with chicken and green peas, and the Dulton, topped with ground beef. Pulled pork was popular around 2013, and Asian-fusion poutines arrived a couple of years later.

  Montreal's large immigrant population has produced poutines inspired by Haitian, Mexican, Portuguese, Indian, Japanese, Greek, Italian and Lebanese cooking. Some barely resemble the original. They replace some or all of the ingredients but keep a crispy element, a dairy or dairy-like element and a unifying sauce. That has led some people to suggest that poutine is now a dish classification of its own, like sandwiches, dumplings, soups and flatbreads. Most Québécois, however, would call a version without cheese a frite sauce, meaning french fries with gravy. A sweet potato version is offered as a healthier option, with more fibre and vitamins.

  David McMillan of the Montreal restaurants Joe Beef and Globe is credited with starting the gourmet trend in the 1990s. Gourmet plates now feature three-pepper sauce, merguez sausage, foie gras, caviar and truffle. Cooks have paired artisanal cheeses and rich ingredients with Moroccan harissa, lobster sauce and red-wine veal jus. Poutineries often run limited-time specials, such as a Thanksgiving poutine with turkey, stuffing and cranberry sauce. Ahead of cannabis legalization in Canada, Montreal's Le Gras Dur served a "pot poutine". Its gravy included hemp protein, hemp seeds and hemp oil, and it came with a joint-like roll of turkey, wild mushrooms and arugula.

  Smoke's Poutinerie, New York Fries, McDonald's, Wendy's, A&W, KFC, Harvey's, Mary Brown's, Arby's and Wahlburgers sell versions in Quebec and the rest of Canada, though not always countrywide. Tim Hortons joined them in 2018. Fast-food combo meals in Canada often let customers have their fries "poutinized" with curds and gravy, or swap a poutine in as the side.

  Across the border, poutine appears in the northern United States, including New England, the wider Northeast, the Pacific Northwest and the Upper Midwest. Fresh curds are not widely available there, so cooks usually turn to other cheeses. In some places a mixed fry topped with cooked ground beef is called a hamburger mix, though it is less popular than the regular mix. One Pacific Northwest variation replaces the gravy with a chowder of local seafood.

  Disco fries were popularized in New Jersey in the 1990s. They are fries typically covered in mozzarella and brown gravy. The name dates to the 1970s, when late-night diners arriving from dancing at disco clubs favoured them. New Orleans has its own versions, including Cajun poutine. Poutine has also reached the United Kingdom, Korea and Russia, where it has been nicknamed "Raspoutine". In 2017, La Maison de la Poutine, the first poutinerie in Paris, opened and quickly drew attention from mainstream media and gastronomers. On the Isle of Man, a close cousin called chips, cheese and gravy combines thick-cut chips, shredded Manx Cheddar and a thick beef gravy.

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• 6. Mockery And Pride

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  Charles-Alexandre Théorêt wrote Maudite Poutine!, the first study of how the meanings attached to poutine have changed. He revisited many of those stigmas in an interview on Tout le monde en parle on the 11th of November 2007. By his account, non-Québécois long mocked the dish as a culinary invention. They used it to stigmatize Quebec society and reduce its legitimacy. The first generations to suffer from that stigma chose to distance themselves from poutine. Younger people in Quebec reclaimed it as a symbol of cultural pride.

  Health advocates have criticized poutine since the 1980s. A 2013 study of Canadian restaurants found that it had the second-highest sodium level among single meal items. The average was 1547 mg and the highest reading reached 2227 mg, with only stir-fry entrées ranking above it.

  From the mid-2000s, poutine gained fans beyond Quebec's borders, and the mockery gradually faded. The dish entered popular discourse as a symbol of Canadian identity, and it is now often presented as part of Canadian cuisine, even as the national dish. Nicolas Fabien-Ouellet argued in the peer-reviewed journal CuiZine that this "Canadization" amounts to cultural appropriation. His objection has nothing to do with cooking or eating poutine outside Quebec. It concerns only the habit of presenting it as a Canadian dish rather than a Québécois one.

  Fabien-Ouellet wrote that once a Quebec cultural trait is appreciated abroad, "it begins to be identified as typically Canadian". In his view, this stops Quebec culture from shining and feeds processes of absorption and assimilation. He compared the situation to the reasons Cajun cuisine is distinguished in the American context.

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• 7. Festivals And Fame

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  Warwick, Quebec, held the first poutine festival in 1993. The annual event grew into the largest cheese festival in Canada, and in 2014 it moved to the larger town of Victoriaville. Drummondville has hosted its own festival since 2008. Montreal's La Poutine Week has run from the 1st to the 7th of February every year since 2013. By 2021 it was the largest poutine festival in the world, with over 700 restaurants serving more than 350,000 poutines. Le Grand Poutinefest, founded in 2015, tours towns in Quebec on most weekends from April to September. Festivals are also held in Ottawa-Gatineau, Toronto, Calgary, Vancouver, Moncton, Quebec City and Sherbrooke, and in American cities including Chicago, Manchester in New Hampshire and Knoxville.

  Food critic Jacob Richler remarked in 2012 that Canadian dishes resemble their European roots too closely to count as original. He made an exception for poutine, which he credited as the country's most famous culinary creation. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's 2007 online survey of the greatest Canadian inventions ranked it tenth. In May 2014, the word poutine was added to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary of the English language. A 2017 Maclean's survey of favourite iconic Canadian food put poutine first, with 21% of respondents, ahead of maple syrup with 14%. By 2011, media outlets were already reporting the 11th of April as National Poutine Day.

  In March 2016, poutine was served at the White House during the first state dinner hosted by President Barack Obama for Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Canada Day celebrations in Trafalgar Square in London have featured it for several years. After the 2013 Lac-Mégantic rail disaster, it became a comfort food for the local community. It was also served at the inaugural Canadian Comedy Awards.

  Since 2010, the International Federation of Competitive Eating has held a world poutine-eating championship sponsored by the Toronto-based chain Smoke's Poutinerie. Critics complained that the first contest took place outside Quebec and excluded Québécois. The federation replied that Montreal poutineries had shown no interest in hosting it. It added that regulations for contests in Quebec make it hard to include the province. In 2011, chef Chuck Hughes beat Bobby Flay on Iron Chef America with a plate of lobster poutine.

  The dish has also inspired novelties. In 2013, Jones Soda Co. made a limited-edition poutine-flavoured soft drink that drew international pop culture attention. Bacon-poutine was one of four finalists in the 2014 Lay's Canada Do Us A Flavour potato chip contest. It did not win, but Lay's later added a bacon-poutine variety for the World Flavourites. Loblaws' President's Choice and Ruffles also sell poutine-flavoured chips in Canada. Since 2017, Giapos Ice Cream of New Zealand has served a poutine ice cream of oolong matcha tea, ice cream and caramel sauce over hand-cut fries. A 2018 campaign for the film Crazy Rich Asians produced "the world's richest poutine", made with wagyu steak, lobster, truffles, shiitake and chanterelle mushrooms, edible orchids and gold flakes. It was priced just under $450.

  Hockey players have joined in. Joel Edmundson of the 2018-19 champion St. Louis Blues ate poutine from the Stanley Cup at a celebration in his hometown of Brandon, Manitoba, attended by over 4,000 fans. Mathieu Joseph, a native of Chambly, Quebec, who won the Cup with the Tampa Bay Lightning in 2020 and 2021, did the same at his own celebration in 2021.

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• 8. Poutine In Politics

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  During the 2000 American election, the comedian Rick Mercer posed as a reporter for the Talking to Americans segment of the Canadian mock news show This Hour Has 22 Minutes. He asked US politicians what they thought of "Prime Minister Jean Poutine" and his endorsement of George W. Bush. The real Prime Minister of Canada at the time was Jean Chrétien. None of the interviewees noticed the substitution, and Bush pledged to "work closely" with Mr. Poutine. Years later, on his first official visit to Canada as president, Bush joked, "There's a prominent citizen who endorsed me in the 2000 election, and I wanted a chance to finally thank him … I was hoping to meet Jean Poutine." The remark was met with laughter and applause.

  A far less cheerful "Poutine" surfaced during the 2011 Canadian federal election. Some voters reported robocalls claiming to come from Elections Canada, made from a phone number registered to "Pierre Poutine". The calls targeted voters who had earlier said they would not vote for the Conservative Party. Made on election day or the day before, they falsely told people their polling station had changed. Investigation of the Robocall scandal by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police ended with the conviction of Michael Sona, a junior Conservative Party staffer, for violating the Elections Act.

  On the 16th of June 2017, Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel lunched with Justin Trudeau on hot dogs and poutine. Michel later tweeted that it was "A great way to meet a dear friend though our fries are better". The joke referred to the popular claim that fries were originally invented in Belgium. In 2019, Canada served poutine to diplomats at the United Nations while seeking support for its bid for a non-permanent Security Council seat in the following year's election.

  In French, the surname of Russian president Vladimir Putin is spelled "Poutine", and the two words sound identical. Washington Post columnist Al Kamen mistakenly believed that Mercer's fictional Jean Poutine was a reference to Putin. In 2017, a Russian-themed poutinerie named Vladimir Poutine opened in Montreal, with dishes named for political figures from Rasputin to Donald Trump. In the week after the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, the three Maison de la Poutine restaurants in Paris received frequent insults and threats. Some messages stated a belief that the owners worked for the Russian state. A poutinerie in Lyon changed the name of its 20-year signature dish, Vladimir poutine, saying it "was no longer funny". In Quebec, the drive-in Le Roy Jucep announced that it was retiring the word poutine in support of Ukraine. Its menus and branding went back to "fromage-patate-sauce", the name Jean-Paul Roy had used before the nickname stuck.

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