Food Detective: Looking for carbs? French Canadians have the answer

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Updated: March 23, 2012 8:01AM

Press any foodie, and they’ll likely reveal a dark secret about some common, beloved food they’ve never eaten.

Until recently, for me that dish was poutine, the heart-challenging French-Canadian dish of fried potatoes, gravy and cheese curds. Legend has it a customer at Fernand Lachance’s restaurant in Warwick, Quebec, asked for a bag of fries with curds. Lachance complied, muttering that this concoction was a “maudite poutine” (a damned mess). Later, another restaurateur added gravy. That’s the generally accepted story, though as with Chicago’s Italian beef and deep dish pizza, a number of people claim to have originated this iconic snack.

Wandering through old Quebec City during its annual Winter Carnival, I corrected this embarrassing omission in my culinary education.

Many Quebecers told me the best version of this local specialty could be found at a fast food-type restaurant called Chez Ashton. Ashton poutine was, indeed, excellent: locally grown potatoes, hand-cut and fried crisp, with light chicken gravy and squeaky-fresh cheese curds. Though simple, poutine is easy to mess up, and I heard many ardent poutine partisans lament sad versions with limp fries, canned gravy and curds past their prime.

Throughout Quebec, poutine’s simple carb platform is dressed with all kinds of ingredients, including chopped beef and hot dogs.

In Chicago, I’ve counted half a dozen restaurants now serving poutine, among them the Gage, where Dirk Flanagan shoots for “elegance and refinement” by adding stewed vegetables, rendering his poutine more colorful and texturally interesting, though threatening to make it seem almost (gasp!) healthy.

Flanagan protests. “Honestly, this was no attempt at making the dish seem healthy. It’s crazy hearty but not healthy, like eating junk food with really high-quality ingredients.”

Having dinner at Quebec’s elegant Hotel Frontenac (where poutine has likely never been served), Leslie Anthony, Skier magazine editor, told me he and friends run fries, gravy and curds through a blender and carry it up the slopes in a back-mounted bladder.

“On a powder day,” Anthony said, “when no one wants to go down the hill for lunch, we can keep skiing, sipping liquid poutine,” which he said did not taste bad at all, though he cautioned, “You must watch out for chunks.”

David Hammond is an Oak Park writer and contributor to WBEZ (91.5 FM) and LTHForum.com.
E-mail detective@suntimes.com.