Poutine, Part Deux

ARE YOU READY? After an unconscionable delay, we continue! Avec le manger du poutine!

But first, a tiny bit of set-up.

It seems fairly common knowledge that poutine is something one eats (and likely you have already come up with this conclusion) when one is, to use my new favorite phrase, “in one’s cups.” Knowing this, and fearing that we might not be able to fully enjoy poutine without the guiltless, hungry attitude brought on by drink (the latter reason, of course, being much of the reasoning behind the former), my supervisor and I set off on a bar crawl that would take us from where we work, near Washington Square Park, down and across the island to our star destination, TPoutine. It was a very successful crawl, which is to say both that we had fun and that, upon arriving at TPoutine, we were quite drunk. By this point, we had also been joined by Lance and by my supervisor’s guy (going on, I shall refer to them as Alexa and Max).

The menu at TPoutine is overwhelming – you can see it on the website, where you should go anyway, just for the intro. There are burgers and sandwiches and ice cream...it's the kind of menu that looks greasy-delicious even when sober. When drunk, it's the kind that makes you want to get one of everything. Luckily, we had a goal. Alexa and I had predetermined that we would get one classic poutine and one variation – in this case we went for the smoked meat poutine, which is really just the classic with smoked meat. You should read that article, too. Seriously, friends, the education I am giving you here is priceless.

Then, we proceeded to stuff our gullets. And oh my goodness, friends. I know I mentioned that I had fallen in love with poutine in Poutine, the original post. But even recounting how happy it made me and my taste buds has me in a tizzy! It was so crispy, so unctuous, so salty! And the way that slight rubberiness of the cheese curds matched the starchy fries and liquid gravy was a revelation. I cannot imagine a more straightforward form of satisfaction than a good deal of drinking followed by a good deal of poutine.

It’s absolutely necessary to note that Lance got what Mr. Trillin claims is perhaps the second most popular variation on poutine: fries and gravy with chicken and peas. I think of it as an homage to Canada’s English colonizers, and though I was originally opposed to it for its lack of cheese curds, it turned out to be possibly as delicious as the original, sweeter and more nutritious-seeming. I enjoyed eating my original or smoke meat versions until I could hardly stand the saltiness, then chomping on a bit of Lance’s for some tasty balance.

It’s also worth noting that TPoutine has some shortcomings. The space is narrow and difficult for groups. The décor tries maybe a little too hard. And our poutine took so long to come that if I hadn’t been rather deep in my cups I would have been rather disgusted. (As a result of slow service, a byob policy that prompted Lance to get us a bunch of forties, and the fact that Max ordered later than the rest of us did, I have no idea what kind of poutine he got. I remember it looked good, though. I think it had mushrooms). Futhermore, the woman at the counter, while friendly, did not seem to have anything invested in knowing her business or giving good service.

But, like the lamer plot points in Avatar, I really didn’t care. The poutine was that worth it: the Pandora of my awesome analogy.

You know what else? Smoked meat is some tasty biz. There’s a Jewish Canadian deli just opened up near my hood. I believe I have some more research to do....