Short Stuff: Poutine: Canada's Pride
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Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck, and Jerry's here. Wait, no, she isn't. Jerry's not here. Dave's not here. We're left on our own, like a pair of losers, and this is short stuff. That's right. Big thanks to HowStuffWorks.com, the Canadian encyclopedia, and Food & Wine magazine for the information that I culled about Canada's national dish...

At 740 calories and 41 grams of fat per serving, the French fried brown gravy cheese curd squeaky delight that is poutine. Yes. I love poutine. How about you? What's not to like? I don't. Of course I love poutine. I can't eat a lot of that kind of thing. Well, now, who can't? Because, you know, I'm trying to look good.

be healthier and look better. And poutine does not lend itself to that. You look both, by the way. I appreciate that. But in Canada, you got to eat some of that poutine. You definitely do. Whenever we visit Toronto, I'm always on that stuff. You have to. But

One reason why we can't eat it as much is because we live in the southeastern United States, whereas poutine was originally invented in Quebec, which can get awfully cold in the middle of winter. So it actually makes a lot of sense to eat a higher calorie diet during that time, like a bear. That's right. It popped up in the 1950s in the snack bars of rural Quebec.

And it started gaining in popularity. It kind of spread out from there. As we'll learn, it eventually started popping up in fast food menus in the 1980s.

Like McDonald's and Burger King and stuff like that in Quebec and then eventually over the border into Ontario. And nowadays you can find it all over the world, even though if you want, you know, if you want that OG, you got to get it somewhere in Quebec. Right. And if you're a purist, you definitely have to get it from Quebec. That's just the way it goes.

That's right. So there's a bunch of different families or people who lay claim to inventing poutine, but they all hail from the same area called the Centre de Québec, which means center of Quebec, which is ironically in the south.

And that is a really important place because that's where the fromageries, the cheesemakers who made these squeaky cheese curds that are essential to poutine, if you're a poutine purist, where they're made. And there's the first guy who we'll meet is from Warwick in Quebec. And his name was Fernand Lachance. Yes.

of Cafe Ideal. And he said that he first added curds to fries because one of his customers, Eddie Liness, said, hey, add some curds to these fries. Yeah, that was in 1957. And he replied in French, I'm not even going to try it, but he replied in French, that will make a damn mess. But he did it anyway, served it in a paper bag. It became pretty popular and people started kind of customizing it, adding vinegar and ketchup and stuff. And then six years into that,

He started to serve that on a plate because it was such a mess. And customers were like, hey, they're on the plate now. They're not in this bag staying warm. They're getting cold. So he said, oh, dump some brown gravy on that stuff and said, how do you like that for warm? But in French. But in French. Do you want me to try the French quote? Sure. Oh, sure. Ça va te faire un maudit poutine.

Nice. So, okay, we've got our first entrant, Fernand Lachance, courtesy of Eddie Lannes. This is 1957? Yeah.

I guess, no, 1963 is when he added the gravy. 57 is when he added the gravy. Yeah, that's when poutine, complete poutine was 1963. But our next guy comes from in Drummondville, Jean-Paul Roy. And he said, no, I had a place, a drive-in restaurant called Le Roy Juice Up. And in 1964, which was clearly a year later, he said, I've been serving fries with this sauce, though, since 1958. I called it patat sauce.

And he said customers started adding cheese curds. I was selling those at the snack counter, and they started dumping those in there. So he started doing that and added it to the regular menu and named it fromage patat sauce. And kind of a fun little side note there, apparently he couldn't find a container in his province that could even hold this stuff. It was so heavy. So he had to go to Toronto to source a vendor who could provide these sturdy containers. Yeah.

Pretty fun. So poutine, actually, the name of it is it essentially means messy or mess, at least in slang in Quebec, for sure. But people say that it's probably or possibly one of the etymological theories is that it hails from the English word pudding.

And not pudding like you and I think that has the jiggly skin off top that you have to peel off when you take it out of the refrigerator. This is pudding as in like figgy pudding, which is essentially like a mixture of various foods, sometimes fig, and that it can be kind of messy. It's not like, it's just like a hodgepodge just kind of mixed together, that kind of messy. And so poutine, possibly from pouding, is where this whole thing came from.

Yeah. Or maybe one of the other like 10 to 15 explanations of root words, like French words like pate or –

How would you say that one? Poutit. Poutit, which is a potato ragu. So, you know, no one agrees on that, kind of like a lot of the stuff that we talk about with these origin stories of foods. A lot of people will lay claim and no one agrees on who the person is, although I'm sure there will be people write in and say, no, it's definitely for sure one of these people or maybe even someone else. Yeah. So what we do know is that it showed up from the more rural area of Sainte-Redou, Quebec,

to Quebec City in 1969 at a place called Ashton's Snack Bar. It made it to Montreal in 1983, and then it started to spread far and wide from there. They say we take a break and we come back and we trace poutine's spread like so much gravy flowing over a pile of fries. Great. Stuff you should know.

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All over Canada, different variations started to pop up, like Italian poutine with spaghetti sauce or sausage instead of like the gravy, veggie poutine. There are regional variations. Apparently Montreal style has smoked meat. I've had that. Have you? Yeah. How do you like it? It was great. I mean, it's hard to mess up poutine, in my opinion.

Yeah. But, you know, as far as traditionalists go, it's just the straight up curds and gravy. There's also one more thing. I'm sorry. There's also a restaurant in Toronto. I can't remember. Also, I totally name check, but they made like Korean poutine. Oh, I can't remember what made it Korean, but it was the bomb. OK, I think it had some sort of smoked meat on it as well.

All right. I'd try that. By the 70s, poutine had spread to the United States and New York and New Jersey. They called it disco fries and used shredded mutts instead of those cheese curds because, you know, one thing we mentioned, it was made where it was made because you get those cheese curds fresh and they say like, hey, man, if you're...

If you're keeping these curds for a couple of days, they don't squeak anymore and it's not the same. So this disco fries thing is an abomination. Yeah, but it's a great name. Yeah, pretty good. So it first started to spread to national restaurant chains back in 1985. There was a Quebec fast food franchise called Fritz, F-R-I-T-S.

And they did not last very long, but they seem to be on record as the first national chain or at least large regional chain to feature poutine. But the one that really kind of kicked it off was Burger King.

One of their franchisees, Jean-Louis Roy, back in 1987, was like, I really want to offer poutine Burger King. Please let me offer poutine. And the Burger King thought on it and said, wish granted. And so this first Burger King franchise started selling poutine. And I guess it sold well enough that Burger King was like, we're going to sell this in all of our Quebec restaurants.

Yeah, McDonald's followed suit afterward. They added it to the menu in 1990 and then in Quebec only and then expanded to the rest of Canada. And got a shout out Harvey's, Canadian fast food joint Harvey's started doing so in 1992.

And then something happened in the 2000s when sort of elevated comfort food became a thing. And people were like, let's try and charge, you know, 35 bucks for chicken pot pie. And Edison bulbs everywhere. Yeah, Edison bulbs, you know, lighting up rooms all over the place, like barely. So they said, yeah, let's do that with poutine. And I think Martine Picard of, what's that restaurant, Josh? Pied de Cochon.

That's right. He was the first supposedly or at least first to become known for serving elevated poutine when he invented his foie gras poutine. Yeah.

And so other people are like, oh, foie gras, how about lobster? How about braised beef? And as more and more professional chefs kind of did their own spin on it, it got further and further away from what it was originally. And I don't know who spoke to a chef, Hugh Atchison, from Montreal, I believe, right?

He grew up in Ottawa. Okay. So, but he grew up on poutine. He said there was a poutine truck parked down the street from his high school, which I would have been in big trouble every day if I had grown up like that. But he's basically saying like the people who were coming up with these spins on it probably had never even been to Quebec, had never had actual poutine. Right.

And that it's not supposed to be gussied up. It's like a very simple, basic street food. And he was really angry. I think in the interview they said that he kept pounding his fist and eventually took off his shoe and was pounding his shoe on the table while he was shouting about this.

Oh, I don't believe that one. Hugh Atchison, great person. He has restaurants here in Atlanta and Athens, Georgia. So he's a top chef guy, too. So I love old. What's he – what in Atlanta? Well, I mean, you remember the coffee shop at Pond City Market? That was his. Oh, okay. Yeah, great. Downstairs in his Empire State South in Atlanta is Hugh Atchison's. Edison Bulbs. Edison Bulbs.

Yeah, Edison Bulbs. And then 5 and 10 in Athens is his restaurant because Athens has got some like legit good restaurants now. Yeah, 5 and 10 was great. That went in where what was the like super threadbare restaurant that had been there for a million years before 5 and 10? It was like an Athens institution. I don't know.

Oh, I don't know. I was just there. I tried to go to 5 and 10, but they were booked up because I went to those REM shows again this year. And then Athens is just still one of my favorite places to go. It's a great town. Yeah. But this is about Quebec and Canada. And Hugh Atchison closes out his quote by saying, it's just really comforting garbage food. That's awesome. Which I love. So I guess that's it, right?

Yeah, I got nothing else. You know, go visit Canada, go to Quebec and order some poutine. Yeah, but even still, just maybe also if you can't make it to Quebec, like look up how to make as close an approximation as you can and enjoy it that way. Yeah, I think General Muir here in Atlanta serves poutine. So, you know, I might give that a shot. Sure, sure. Since Chuck said he's going to give it a shot, everybody, that means short stuff is out.

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