What is poutine?

It’s a contest in which the last person alive gets to be president of Russia.

Get out. Now.

claps Nicely done.

Every time you respond to something and tack on your signature, I imagine it as a sarcastic sound of food appreciation.

My misconception has never been more appropriate than now.

It’s gravy and cheese on top of French fires. It is total shit and the fact that Canadians brag about it says a lot about their cuisine.

“discomfort food?”

Just curious: Is gravy a standard offering when ordering fries in the U.S.? I don’t go to family restaurants much nowadays, but in the past it has been relatively common in Canada to offer gravy on the side for an additional cost.

Like a lot of things. lasagna, pulled pork or life generally, poutine is easy to make but hard to make great.
Sure you can use frozen fries, and shredded mozzarella, and packet gravy and call it poutine but the quality of the ingredients and preparation make all the difference.
You don’t like it, fine. But after a day cross country skiing or sledding, it’s pretty awesome.
Also, to slag any cuisine based off of one dish is pretty ignorant. Should we base all American food off of aerosol cheez and hot dogs? British food on tea and jam?

Not commonly. I’ve seen a few diners that offer “wets” (fries with gravy on top), but dipping sauce for fries in the U.S. is typically either ketchup or (less often) mayonnaise.

I imagine that, if you were eating at a restaurant that had gravy already on hand (like a diner or a family restaurant), and asked for gravy on the side to go with your fries, they’d give it to you, but a lot of fast-food restaurants don’t carry gravy in any form.

This is unnecessary, insulting threadshitting. Don’t do it again. No warning issued this time.

RickJay
Moderator

Tartar sauce is better than plain mayo, but I don’t think it ever comes with fries in the US unless you ask for it. Then everybody thinks you’re weird.

My daughter dips her fries in the tartar sauce of her fish sandwiches at McDonald’s. Then she carefully layers the fries on top of the fish and reassembles the sandwich before she eats it. She’s been doing that since before she could talk.

I was thinking along the lines that any place that had on the menu “mashed potatoes (gravy $0.50 extra)” would also have “fries (gravy $0.50 extra)”.

I was just surprised by how many people seemed to be saying “Fries with something on it? Ew, that’s so weird and gross”.

Most of the sorts of family restaurants and diners that I’ve been to, which offer mashed potatoes, typically will offer the gravy at no additional cost (and often, it’s presumed that you want gravy on your mashed potatoes unless you tell them otherwise).

Disco fries are quite common. Not at a fast food place, but bars and diners have them all over the country. The Hat, for example:

If I was to see “fries (gravy $0.50 extra)” on a menu, I would probably assume the place was run by a Canadian ex-pat. Fries are a finger food, meant for dipping, with the curious exception of chili cheese fries (our version of poutine, I suppose…)

I wouldn’t expect to see fries with gravy on the menu at any American diner, but I would expect that, if you asked for it, most of them would give it to you. At least, the customer-friendly ones that stay in business for more than a couple of years, not the rare one that makes you order a chicken salad sandwich without the chicken to get toast.

I think it varies by region, but they are on just about every diner menu here in North/Central Jersey.

A timely video from Andrew Rea:

There is also fry sauce, half ketchup and half mayo, or a 1:2 mixture depending on who you talk to.

A hamburger place I go to semi-often always offers ranch dressing with their french fries.