Yeah, but they don’t squeak after they’ve been fried! The squeak is how you know they’re fresh.
Okay, I’m going to Montreal this summer, and I need somebody to tell me where to get good poutine. And I also need someone to tell me whether to eat it with a fork or my hands, lest I embarrass myself. Also, when I order, is it “poutine” tout court, or are there options I should specify?
You’ll see when you order it - use your fork. I can’t tell you how it’s served in Montreal, but if you order it in Alberta (a lot of Quebecois live in the Mountain parks), it’s one way.
Funny, I’ve gotten yelled at many times by Canadians for using “American” to mean only USA-ers.
Are you sure they’re Canadian? We tend not to yell. 
You can get Wisconsin cheese curds at Trader Joe, I believe. And A&W restaurants sell batter fried cheese curds.
Cheese. Milk gone to heaven.
Poutine in pictures!
Wow, it sounded delicious but those pictures managed to gross me out. I’ll stick with my chili cheese fries.
The ad at the bottom was funny though. It comes with cigarettes!
There’s a whole site devoted to Montreal poutine places. Using the site’s reviews as a refresher, I definitely recommend Patati Patata (and bet $10 that’s where Anaamika was served by a cute French guy) or La Belle Province (for the food, not the atmosphere).
True, but I just wanted to introduce to the OP a general idea of what curds are like, given that he thought they were like cottage cheese curds. Also, if you’re in the Chicago area, during the summer they have outdoor farmer’s markets downtown at different locations depending on the day of the week. There’s a cheesemaker from Wisconsin who comes down for those, and he sells fresh squeaky cheese curds.
How sad it is that of all the Canadian-flavored threads on this board, only the poutine ones regularly go deep into a second page!
Manitoba Legislature to Redraw Electoral Boundaries – 3 posts maximum!
Nova Scotia to Name New Tourist Trail – no posts at all!
BC Man Marries Chinese Girlfriend – Who cares?!?
Margaret Atwood’s Voice Attains Three-Tone Range – Pffft!
But Italian Poutine With Chicken, Tabarnac! and you’ve got seventy, eighty posts, guaranteed! What a country! No country for lively discussion! Country for old, dessicated, poutine-eating men. Call Joel and Ethan, quick.
I don’t think anybody believed this one.
For now, RickJay. For now.
This is why I made my first post - Yes, Trader Joe’s sells cheese curds. But they’re crap. Don’t buy them.
I will amend my first post based on the other posts here. Yes, you can get good cheese curds outside of Wisconsin. The trick is they have to be fresh - you cannot get them from a place where they order them in bulk and ship them around the country. I dearly love Trader Joe’s, but the curds they sell are not fresh. Nor are the ones sold in the grocery stores in the UP of Michigan, even though we’re right on the border of Wisconsin. Heck, a lot of the curds sold in Wisconsin aren’t fresh.
If your experience of cheese curds is “eh, I don’t get it, it’s just a hunk of oddly shaped cheddarish cheese” then you haven’t had fresh curds. Get 'em from the dairy that makes them, or don’t get 'em at all.
How exactly do you know when a cow is happy? Seems like all they do is flap their tails around and chew, no matter what situation they’re in.
They flap their tails and chew a bit more happily.
Amen!
Sorry, but that doesn’t quite match the availability of cheese curds in Wisconsin, where you really can walk into gas stations and buy ones that are hours-old. If they’re more than a day or two old, they’re not really worth it.
As someone who dislikes poutine, I’ll say that Patati Patata makes the most edible version I’ve had yet. The restaurant is tiny (and popular), though, so you might want to go outside of peak hours. La Belle Province is a greasy spoon chain whose poutine is mysteriously popular. I’d go with Patati Patata for the poutine, and if you must stop at La Belle Province, do so for a michigan.