It seems that poutine, a popular French-Canadian dish made of French fries, cheese curds and gravy, may soon be available throughout the United States.
A friend told me last week that he intends to sink his life savings into starting a chain of American poutine restaurants. If the plan comes to fruition, he expects the first location to be at the intersection of Wisconsin and M Streets in the heart of Georgetown, an upscale Washington, D.C. neighbourhood.
“We’re working on a marketing plan now,” he said in an instant message on Wednesday. “It looks like we’ll be serving fried chicken and poutine and calling the place Curds ’n’ Birds.”
Although the mere thought of poutine triggers the gag reflex in some people, my friend, a resident of leafy Georgetown, became fixated on the idea of profiting from mass sales of the dish after he found out that in eastern parts of Canada it is as popular as hockey and beer.
Cheese curds are small, rubbery pieces of fresh cheddar that have not yet been pressed or aged. Poutine is French-Canadian slang for the word “mess.”
The creator of the dish, Fernand Lachance (above), died in 2004 at the age of 86 in Warwick, Quebec, a small town 138 kilometres (86 miles) northeast of Montreal.
Legend has it that Lachance first made poutine after a trucker named Eddy Lanaisse came into his restaurant, Lutin Qui Rit, in September 1957 asking for a mixture of cheese curds, fries and gravy.
The food is now standard fare throughout much of eastern Canada and is sold in pubs, diners and fast-food chains. Some restaurants serve up such variations as “Italian poutine” with meat and tomato sauce, or “Chinese poutine” with meat and barbecue sauce.
At Birds ’n’ Curds, the signature dish of curds, fries and gravy will be called “Routine Poutine.” The chain will also serve heath conscious variations on traditional poutine with such dishes as the low calorie “Lean Poutine” and the “Green Poutine” salad.
Diners will be able to wash down their poutine with the “Poutini” a vodka and potato schnapps cocktail with cheese curds floating in it ~
Posts
6 comments:
I think this person sounds BRILLIANT -- a marketing genius! I would like to invest in these restaurants, and I'll be others would too....
While the idea that our national dish was stumbled upon in the past 50 years via one truckstop entrepreneur is an interesting one, I have a recollection of a paragraph in a grade 10 project on the settling of the Canadian east coast that suggests poutine is a far older delacy.
Now my memory may be fuzzy with grade 10 being a distant memory (thankfully), but I believe poutine is indiginous to the Acadian people, mostly responsible for settling parts of our East Coast, which would also help to explain it's popularity out at that end of the country.
Regardless of it's origin, it is true that poutine that substitutes the curds with grated mozza is just fries with gravy and cheese. Substituting the curds is doing a deservice to the wonder that is poutine.
Well, this is indeed surprising news. It certainly calls for further investigation.
Short of Leslie providing her Grade 10 essay, I guess the only way to proceed is for me to do some cold, hard research.
Here's something surprising. I looked up poutine in an online dictionary, and it came back and said it couldn't find that word. It asked if I meant POUTING....
Hey, Julie! I, too, live in Georgetown -- and leafy is the right word for it. Anyway, I went past the place where your friend is opening Curds 'n' Birds, and it looks so cute! I bet it's going to be a huge success! Right under the big name sign, there's a smaller red neon sign that says "You want fries with that?" Which I think is very clever, since of course poutine IS primarily fries!
Hmmm. Thanks for the update Roy. To be honest, I never thought he'd get this project off the ground.
Post a Comment