Poutine

SO! Hi, everyone. Happy belated new year to you and yours. I have to say that while I'm perfectly happy about a new year, January is quite possibly my least favorite month. I think it's been this way for a while, but I’m only now starting to see the pattern, possibly because I don’t have anything particular against the month itself. To the contrary, I enjoy the old concept of a fresh start or clean slate, the beginning of something new. I envision a white expanse in the crisp morning light, a cleansing wind: January. But in practice, January is never full of new things, it’s a return, after the manic and exhausting suspension of the holidays, to old things, many of which are delightful (friends, one’s own apartment and city) but many not (getting up early in the mornings, having less time to play, budget). And while I am finally (finally!) in a job that I actually like, that experience has been alarmingly insufficient mitigation to the strain I feel of this return. And I don’t need to point out that it is COLD.

So imagine my thrill to have discovered something both delightful and new! Something decadent and, even better, edible! Ladies and gentlemen, I have been introduced to poutine and I am in love.

Poutine, for those who don’t know (my understanding of just how much in the American collective unconscious poutine is at the moment being minimal), is a close cousin of what we in the U.S. call disco fries, which is to say french fries, gravy, and cheese. But where disco fries tend to have shredded cheddar or mozzarella, poutine has cheese curds. That’s right, friends, cheese curds! Perhaps you remember my enthusiasm about cheese curds from a previous post, although I love them so much that perhaps someday they will warrant their own post.

In any case, poutine comes to us from the same friendly neighbors to the North that brought us Tim Horton’s Donuts. Oh Canada, your culinary gifts are unparalleled. My direct supervisor at work was the first one to tell me about poutine, and her infectious excitement was only increased by an article by Calvin Trillin in the most recent New Yorker that is entirely about poutine. It is also one of the funnier things I’ve read all year and I highly encourage you to peruse it (though you'll need a subscription to do so online. Trip to the library, perhaps?). Both my supervisor, a woman so enjoyable that she also deserves her own post, and Mr. Trillin informed me that poutine now has a presence on the Lower East Side in NYC. And my supervisor, being a genius, gave me a gift certificate for a poutine-eating date for Christmas, which I cashed in last Friday.

Oh no! Will you look at that? My lunch break is over and this post is already long. GUESS WHAT? Two-part post. Stay tuned and I will tell you of my poutine-eating adventures on the LES. I’m pretty excited.