Had it. Meh.
I’ve resorted to making it myself a couple of times, just because that was the only way I’d have an opportunity to try it. But I have no idea how good of a job I did.
We recently had a funny experience that relates to this. At our Weight Watchers meeting a couple of weeks ago, one of the members was going on vacation in Canada and was trying to get other members’ opinions about acceptable Canadian foods. My husband suggested (jokingly) poutine (jokingly because it’s hardly WW-acceptable) and the poor woman blinked, muttered to herself “That’s Irish” and shrugged it off.
I told him after the meeting she probably thought he meant poteen (and subsequently explaining what poteen was) and at the next meeting, the woman actually confirmed that she’d thought he said poteen and only realized that he hadn’t after we’d all gone to our respective homes.
Oddly enough neither my wife or I has ever tried it, but whenever my kids visit, they head straight for the nearest poutinnerie. If I wanted to make the cheese myself, I would follow a recipe for mozzarella and stop before kneading. But I think grated mozzarella would also work.
Quite a few restaurants in Atlantic Canada seem to cheap out on the poutine and use grated mozzarella. In the early nineties, to a young lad fresh from Western Canada it was a revelation but after many years of the good stuff mozzarella is a pale imitation that is not worth bothering with.
Poutine isn’t living on the edge without a deep-fried Mars bar for dessert.
I’ve never tried it — can’t get past the bowl of vomit part.
Seems to me I’ve seen it mentioned on billboards for restaurants in Louisiana. Is it considered Cajun cousine?
Nope.
BB’s cafe in Houston offers the Tex-Cajun Virgin–shoestring fries topped with gravy, roast beef & chile con queso. Obviously this is fusion “cuisine.”
If I’m ever Up North, I’ll gladly try the real thing…
I’ve seen a lot about poutine, on message boards in recent years. I’m British, never been to North America, so have never encountered the stuff in real life. Tend to feel about it rather like Leaffan here – who has had first-hand experience. It strikes me as not at all disgusting, but just seemingly, rather dull: efficient and agreeable-enough belly-filler if one were definitely hungry. Maybe there’s quite an element here, of the thing of foods (often decidedly plain) which people have known and loved from childhood, and the sentiment / nostalgia factor which goes with that.