Like Céline Dion, poutine was once mocked and underappreciated in Quebec

December 20, 2017 10:36 AM

Poutine is sparking a culture war in Canada: After first appearing in the 1950s in rural Quebec, poutine came to be sneered at by some gastro-snobs as a late-night nosh whose name dare not be spoken in a province that has long fetishized French cuisine. Its greasy simplicity was served up at hockey arena snack bars and seen as reflecting a working-class Quebec more inclined to cheese fries than foie gras. […] Poutine’s rags-to-riches transformation was cemented when Martin Picard, a maverick of Canadian, or shall we say Quebecois cuisine, helped raise it to an art form in 2001 when he made poutine with foie gras the signature dish at his now-celebrated Montreal restaurant Au Pied de Cochon. (SLNYT)
posted by Johnny Wallflower (39 comments total)

One of the things that makes poutine actually poutine is the use of fresh, squeaky cheese curds. And outside of Quebec, even in a city as big as Toronto, the infrastructure just isn't there to deliver cheese curds fresh.
posted by thecjm at 10:39 AM on December 20, 2017 [6 favorites]

Its greasy simplicity was served up at hockey arena snack bars

At our arena the poutine bar is hidden inside one of the club level sections, where non-club level ticket holders can't indulge. That irony, well.

(Also, not going to lie, I bought tickets on that side of the arena this year specifically for the poutine. It might not squeak, but I need a little extra comfort this season.)
posted by librarianamy at 10:45 AM on December 20, 2017 [2 favorites]

I didn't realize the curds are supposed to be cheddar. I guess I've never had real poutine, then.

but, like sex, bad poutine is still pretty good.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 10:47 AM on December 20, 2017 [3 favorites]

I grew up along the Quebec/Ontario border. Poutine is Franco Ontarian as well.
posted by Evstar at 10:48 AM on December 20, 2017 [4 favorites]

Also, poutine is emphatically not sparking a culture war. Everyone calm down.
posted by Evstar at 10:49 AM on December 20, 2017 [14 favorites]

I grew up along the Quebec/Ontario border. Poutine is Franco Ontarian as well.

Quebec identity politics focuses on how French and distinct the province is while simultaneously ignoring the rest of Franco-Canadians. To the point where French Canadian and Quebecois are often used interchangeably when that is not, in fact, true.
posted by thecjm at 10:53 AM on December 20, 2017 [10 favorites]

I thought the 'poutine culture war' started when a Canadian satirist made George W. Bush think it was the name of the Canadian Prime Minister.
posted by oneswellfoop at 10:55 AM on December 20, 2017 [2 favorites]

Also, poutine is emphatically not sparking a culture war. Everyone calm down.

Tim Horton's has been flirting with the stuff since the summer, so yeah -- "Now at Tim Horton's" is the Canadian equivalent of jumping a shark tank in a motorcycle. It's been mainstream up here for years.
posted by Quindar Beep at 11:01 AM on December 20, 2017 [2 favorites]

Quebec identity politics focuses on how French and distinct the province is while simultaneously ignoring the rest of Franco-Canadians. To the point where French Canadian and Quebecois are often used interchangeably when that is not, in fact, true.

I'm with you. It's a shame because I believe we could have better representation and French education if we could adjust our attitudes. This goes equally for all the snide, resentful Anglos you run into.

More on topic, maybe no other food can comfort me like a simple poutine.
posted by Evstar at 11:02 AM on December 20, 2017 [3 favorites]

I'll die on this hill.

Go ahead and serve it everywhere it's a comforting dish (no grated cheese plz). But it's as Canadian As tacos are Canadian, it's a Quebec dish, end of story.
posted by WaterAndPixels at 11:33 AM on December 20, 2017 [5 favorites]

And the PDC poutine for all it's over-the-top-ishness is not as good as a properly executed classic Poutine.

(also even in Qc, 98% of poutine available is almost garbage due to improper cheese curds)
posted by WaterAndPixels at 11:35 AM on December 20, 2017 [1 favorite]

I thought the 'poutine culture war' started when a Canadian satirist made George W. Bush think it was the name of the Canadian Prime Minister.

The funny thing is that it’s actually the name of the president of Russia, in French.
posted by rodlymight at 11:47 AM on December 20, 2017 [3 favorites]

Also if you ever encounter refrigerated cheese curds, a ziploc bag with curds inside dropped in hot water for a few minutes will help restore some quality to them they won't ever be the same again.
posted by WaterAndPixels at 11:50 AM on December 20, 2017 [2 favorites]

The one time I've been to Montreal (so far!) we went to Au Pied de Cochon and had that poutine and my god it was fabulous.

Nothing else really to say there but try it if you've got the opportunity.
posted by Navelgazer at 12:23 PM on December 20, 2017

Oof... Nothing makes my skin crawl more than white Quebec people talking about not being Canadian.

“Poutine is Quebecois; it is not Canadian,” said Zak Rosentzveig, 25

Its such a loaded way of thinking and so thick with racism. I've seen the same excuses for their love of blackface in their comedy. I apologise for this rant but this is coming from a French-Canadian from outside of Quebec, who's lived in Quebec and has had Quebecois prefer to think of me at best a Pepsi (being called a Pepsi by other French Canadians! SRSLY WTF!) and at worst a foreigner rather than a French Canadian. I've mentioned this before but some of the only racism I ever experienced for being French Canadian was in Quebec from Quebecois.

If you want to dive into more into la poutine n'est pas canadienne c'est québécois arguments see this academic article Poutine Dynamics. And of course, there's the Anglo take here in the National Post - Is poutine an accurate symbol of our national pride?

That being said, poutine without fresh curds isn't poutine. Seriously, Rest of Canada get your act together.
posted by Ashwagandha at 12:26 PM on December 20, 2017 [10 favorites]

Poutine is poutine and you eat it when you're in Quebec at some little hole in the wall and it will be awesome.

You can't get it in Toronto that's for sure - that stuff you call pulled pork poutine may have fries and gravy and something cheesy, but it sure as heck ain't poutine, tabernac.

Speaking of Au Pied de Cochon, we just ate one of their tourtieres and have another in the freezer for xmas eve. Oh my they are gorgeous.
posted by parki at 12:30 PM on December 20, 2017

Poutine is like a plate of beans: you don't want to overthink it.

Sometimes it's not great, sometimes it's amazing. I live on the West coast, but I used to live in Ottawa. I know that "real" Quebec poutine is better, but I also get to lie in the sun in a t-shirt in February, sometimes. As a Canadian, you make the compromises you need to to survive. Mediocre "poutine" is one of them.

I leave the whining about authenticity to people whose job it is to whine about authenticity.
posted by klanawa at 12:44 PM on December 20, 2017 [5 favorites]

Thanks to Mefi I’ve been through all the stages: surprised, interested, blasé, and finally bored on the subject of poutine without ever once eating it, or coming within two thousand miles of le veritable chose.
posted by Segundus at 12:51 PM on December 20, 2017 [15 favorites]

Céline Dion is no longer mocked and underappreciated in Quebec???
posted by jonathanhughes at 1:07 PM on December 20, 2017

Its such a loaded way of thinking and so thick with racism.

Racism? Ok so not sharing an identity is racism? A lot of Quebecers don't feel particularly Canadian, for a myriad of reasons. It's ok not to feel Canadian.
posted by WaterAndPixels at 1:08 PM on December 20, 2017 [2 favorites]

I do find it amusing that Fabien-Ouellet, in his article that kicked off this whole debate, describes how in 2007 the Quebec public voted their national dish to be paté chinois, a dish traditionally associated with 19th century Chinese immigrants working on the railroad in BC. That claim seems to me to be equally an act of cultural appropriation -- Fabien-Ouellet even brings it up in his section specifically on the cultural appropriation of poutine by Anglophones -- and yet this particular act of cultural appropriation by the Quebecois passes entirely without condemnation or indeed recognition.
posted by crazy with stars at 3:22 PM on December 20, 2017 [2 favorites]

Was this article a total re-tread, or am I imagining things? I swear I read something a couple months ago about how poutine was Quebecois, not Candian, discussion of Au Pied du Cochon, etc. A quick google search didn't come up with a smoking gun, so maybe it's just derivative.

That said, the Quebecois don't seem to understand how dishes become popular. One person starts making something, then multiple people in the same city, then a region, then a country, then all of a sudden you've got McPoutine. This is necessarily the way it has to work, because no dish is going to get off the ground simultaneously across an entire country. Acknowledge the heritage, sure. Quebec gets all the credit, like Napoli. But honestly, that fierce possessiveness is what creates a great food culture. Having intense pride in something drives you to make it better.
posted by wnissen at 3:32 PM on December 20, 2017

I grew up in Alberta and had never even heard of poutine until I went to university in Quebec. Seeing it suddenly become so closely affiliated with Canada in the minds of Americans is bizarre to me.

Poutine definitely underwent a cultural explosion around 2000, when everyone became aware of it, but I'm pretty sure it predates the opening of Au Pied de Cochon. It started getting referenced as quintessentially Canadian in things like South Park before then, I think.

I lived not too far away from Au Pied de Cochon when it opened. It was easy to just saunter in at any time without reservations and have a foie gras burger with foie gras poutine, preceded with some amuse bouche cubes of deep-fried foie gras. It was much cheaper then too. I'd often go multiple times a week. I miss those days. It's still my favorite restaurant in the world.
posted by painquale at 4:31 PM on December 20, 2017 [1 favorite]

She added, “Cheese cake poutine is just plain wrong!”

Finally, a voice of reason we can all get behind.

Unless it's just cheese cake shaped like poutine, in which case it lands in the Choco Taco valley of "food ideas that aren't actually bad, but still cause one to ask, 'why?'"

I'm hoping chicken tikka poutine would be more properly called tikka masala poutine, 'cause that sounds amazing. Dry chicken tikka on poutine sounds more or less indistinguishable from poutine with more chewy bits.
posted by eotvos at 4:39 PM on December 20, 2017

The funny thing is that it’s actually the name of the president of Russia, in French.

Can we please have a lot more Poutine, and a lot less Putin down here in the USA? I mean, c'mon, we'll eat damn near anything greasy or cheesy. Why isn't this a thing?!
posted by Xyanthilous P. Harrierstick at 5:24 PM on December 20, 2017

I love poutine, but then again I went to college in Pittsburgh getting O fries with cheese and gravy, so poutine is a definite step up. My father-in-law (not even remotely Québécois) has an irrational hatred of poutine. I have a poutine t-shirt I purchased at the Museés de la Civilisation in Quebec City that I wear just to antagonize him.
posted by jwest at 5:58 PM on December 20, 2017

Also, I've had the poutine at Au Pied de Cochon and it is wonderful.
posted by jwest at 5:59 PM on December 20, 2017

I went to college in Pittsburgh getting O fries with cheese and gravy

I heard they stopped selling the large because people couldn't eat it all. Even the small is like a pound of fries.
posted by Chrysostom at 6:11 PM on December 20, 2017

Was this article a total re-tread, or am I imagining things?

Perhaps you're thinking this article from the National Post? I think it was on the Blue at some point.

Racism? Ok so not sharing an identity is racism?

Firstly, I'll apologise for this derail. It isn't fair for poutine to carry the weight of this argument I'm making but I do think that article raises something about Quebec culture I think is rotten. Sometimes a conversation about poutine isn't really about poutine.

No, identifying as something other than Canadian when you're Canadian does not make you racist. Quebec has been a part of Canada since its earliest days and its culture has had an important impact on how we define the Canadian identity and I'd argue that part of that shared history is what informs Quebec identity as well. If Quebecois want to ignore or dismiss that connection that's fine but this isn't just about questions of identity like that. The Quebec identity illustrated in the comments in that article and others I've seen detailed in the "cultural appropriation" of poutine argument, is a kind of nationalism that's poisoned Quebec politics. And if that identity nationalism was only about poutine I wouldn't have a problem with it. But it isn't just about who has the right to make poutine and call it theirs. When your thinking moves from not identifying with your country and to thinking you're somehow more "special", things get slippery fast.

Would you say the use of blackface is racist? There's many in Quebec who argue that it is not racist at all and a part of Quebec's distinct culture (including people who should know better). Would it matter to you if a New Canadian shopkeeper said "Hi" to you in Quebec when you entered their store? It does to a lot of white Quebecois because they feel it ruins their distinctness. There's many who've argued that to be a Quebecois means being pure laine and not a head scarf wearing Muslim and this is simply a part of the distinctness of their culture.

So yeah considering yourself something other than Canadian when you're a Canadian is not racism but using your distinct identity as an excuse for your culture's traditional xenophobic and nativist tendencies? That's a bit closer to what I'd call racism. To be clear I love Quebec, I share a language and some of their culture with them, I just wish they'd recognise this ugliness and work harder at stamping it out.
posted by Ashwagandha at 6:48 PM on December 20, 2017 [11 favorites]

Quebec is a settler nation that within living memory suffered real oppression from an Anglo-British occupying power and later, a political elite drawn from the occupiers' ranks. But if any form of oppression can reasonably said to have been stamped out, it's oppression against white Quebecois. It's done. The Quiet Revolution worked. Quebec's infrastructure and income are in line with the rest of the country's.

This has left Quebec in the position of being a European settler culture which participates in the typical privileges of such cultures. And sorry: You can never appropriate anything from an unencumbered settler society. Appropriation requires a meaningful imbalance between the appropriator and appropriatee, where taking a cultural element causes material disadvantage. No Quebec poutine joint is suffering because they make poutine in Ontario or New York. There's the Smoke's chain, which is headquartered in Ontario, but Quebecois do not have structural lack of access to money to start a similar business. The only loss may be the ability to present the dominant vision of a cultural invention. But in this case, a variation on fries and gravy is less important than, say, a religion. So sure, we can gab about Real Poutine and such, but there is no justification whatsoever to say Quebecois poutine is a field for the form of structural oppression we associate with things like plastic shamans and headdresses. They are not in the same league.
posted by mobunited at 7:41 PM on December 20, 2017 [5 favorites]

The poutine au fois gras at APdC was the first poutine I ever had, so yeah, it's been a bit downhill from there. But I still really like it.

You'd think Madison, Wisconsin aka Curd City would have better poutine but I've never had a really great one here.
posted by escabeche at 8:37 PM on December 20, 2017

Madison's lack of good poutine is more than compensated for by the presence of Michael's Frozen Custard.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 11:39 PM on December 20, 2017

I grew up in Alberta and had never even heard of poutine until I went to university in Quebec

I also grew up in Alberta and poutine was just a normal part of life, available in every arena cafeteria for post-hockey heart attacks and basically anywhere else that served fries. So from at least the late 80s poutine was an unremarkable part of the local cuisine in parts of rural Alberta.

There's a Mexican restaurant here that does poutine but mexican-ized (think of a taco + poutine) and I legitimately think that's the most Canadian thing. Any list of "Canadian" food ends up being a list of foods immigrants brought with them and then recontextualized to the local area and tastes.

Western Canadian poutine is as quintessentially Canadian as ginger beef and green onion cakes (to pick two Alberta examples)
posted by selenized at 8:10 AM on December 21, 2017

I also grew up in Alberta and poutine was just a normal part of life, available in every arena cafeteria for post-hockey heart attacks and basically anywhere else that served fries. So from at least the late 80s poutine was an unremarkable part of the local cuisine in parts of rural Alberta.

Huh, that's really weird to me. I grew up in Edmonton during that time period and I don't remember it being available anywhere. I mean, maybe it was occasionally available at hockey games or something, but it never made any mark on my psyche. It certainly wasn't available at fast food restaurants like it is now. And I remember coming back to Edmonton after my first year in Montreal and telling friends about poutine, and the best I'd get was, "Oh yeah, I think I've heard of that stuff." Same with milk in a bag.

Ginger beef and green onion cakes, on the other hand, were childhood staples.
posted by painquale at 8:30 AM on December 21, 2017

In the Cold Lake & Bonnyville area it was totally normal. Probably because of the French Canadian roots in the area. But then again, there's a sizeable francophone community in Edmonton so why no poutine?

In Vegreville (I think) I got pyrogys (drowned in butter) on poutine with kielbasa on the side. If that doesn't scream small town Alberta (at least NE Alberta) I don't know what does.
posted by selenized at 8:45 AM on December 21, 2017 [1 favorite]

Sitting here I'm wondering if my small town poutine wasn't the vanguard of a poutine revolution as much as the last vestiges of a dying food culture. When I was a kid fast food chains weren't really a thing yet. We didn't even get a Tim Hortons until the early 2000s (stopping at a TH during a roadtrip was a special treat!) Our fast food was from local diners, food trucks, and cafeterias and reflected our actual local food culture in all its deep fried glory. A lot of those places don't even exist anymore, they've been replaced by newer, nicer, chain restaurants. Now my hometown has TWO Tim Hortons, but nowhere to get pulled moose or lake trout.
posted by selenized at 9:03 AM on December 21, 2017 [2 favorites]

The funny thing is that it’s actually the name of the president of Russia, in French.

Sorry, eh? But Putin in French is most emphatically not a dish with cheese curds and french fries.
posted by Lizard at 8:09 AM on December 22, 2017

Oh wait.. My bad.

Time for more coffee.
posted by Lizard at 8:11 AM on December 22, 2017 [1 favorite]

I'd say the culture war is over; "Reasonable" poutine is available at Costco.

Also, having watched the NYT's behaviour during and since the 2016 election, I'm not sure they're in a position to be lecturing Quebecers about food or anything else.
posted by sneebler at 10:31 AM on December 24, 2017 [2 favorites]