By Gabby Peyton
Poutine is probably Canada’s most iconic dish, so it may come as a surprise that it’s made of only three simple ingredients. Crispy French fries serve as the base, followed by plump cheese curds (the squeakier the better) and topped with hot gravy. poutine is known the world over as iconically Canadian, but it really is a classic Quebecois dish, and according to its inventor (or the one who has the intellectual property, anyway), it’s all about the gravy.
A plethora of poutine origin stories
There are at least a dozen origin stories for the creation of poutine, but they all really rely on one thing – the cheese curds. It all started back in the 1950s in rural Quebec. Due to a dairy surplus, there was an abundance of cheese curds (leftover after processing milk) and they started appearing in snack bars, known in Quebec as casse-croûte, as a snack. To this day, they are served all over the province in bags as a snack, and for those who are in the know, fresher is better (and squeakier).
According to culinary lore, there are two widely accepted origin stories for the creation of the dish. In 1957, at the Café Ideal (which was renamed and later known as Le Lutin Qui Rit) in Warwick, about a two-hour drive from Montreal, customer Eddy Lainesse asked that a bag of those cheese curds at the counter be tossed on top of his French fries and gravy. Because the dish was served in a paper bag at the time, owner Fernand Lachance spoke the now famous phrase: “Ça va faire une maudite poutine” which translates to: “That’s going to make a damn mess.” Later that year, poutine made it onto the menu, for 35 cents.
The other origin story takes place in Drummondville, where Jean-Paul Roy and his wife Fernande ran Le Roy Jucep. They claim they invented poutine in 1964. Roy spent years in Montreal hotel kitchens as a saucier, so it makes sense that he could have been involved in perfecting the trifecta of ingredients for poutine. This restaurant claims they were the first to put the dish on their menu, doing so in 1967 after waitresses were always complaining about constantly scratching “fries-cheese curds-gravy” as the dish became more and more popular. The story goes that one of the cooks was nicknamed ‘Ti-pout’ and poutine was a tribute to him.
You can still visit this restaurant today, though it has new owners. The certificate from the Canadian Intellectual Property Office for the term ‘poutine’ is still up on the wall and Charles Lambert, the current owner, says he recently found Roy’s original gravy recipe while doing renovations. It continues to be all about the sauce at Le Roy Jucep.
Regardless of the inventor, poutine took off quickly and across the province’s casse-croûtes and it became a staple menu item. Poutine first appeared in Quebec City in 1969 at Chez Ashton and by the 1970s it was being sold all over Montreal – it had hit the big time.
Poutine goes global
By the early 2000s Canadian chefs were elevating the humble casse-croûte staple – at Au Pied du Cochon in Montreal it was topped by foie gras, and Chuck Hughes won an Iron Chef cooking competition by topping poutine with lobster. There are now iterations of poutine across the country.
In 2008, Ryan Smolkin launched Smoke’s Poutinerie in Toronto, and this is when poutine really took off across the country, and globally, serving up more than 30 variations. There are now dozens of locations of Smoke’s across the country. These days even McDonald’s and Burger King sell it as a side in Canada and around the world you can find poutine shops and restaurants offering up the Canadian dish – and it is no wonder the unfussy combination of fries, cheese curds and gravy appeal to the global masses. Poutine is iconically Canadian and unequivocally delicious.
Classic Canadian Dish: Poutine
While simple in Poutine’s ingredients (there are only three after all) it’s all about their quality. In an ideal world, one would make their own fries, their own gravy and use the freshest of the fresh cheese curds (like made-the-same-day fresh), but this recipe takes advantage of the air fryer to create crispy fries on which to top your homemade gravy and plump cheese curds.
Hungry for more? Check out these Classic Canadian Dishes:
- In a Jam(Jam): The History of Jam Jams in Canada
- Triple Threat: A History of the Nanaimo Bar
- Delicious Squared: History of Date Squares
- The History of the Iconic Jiggs Dinner
- The History of Pea Soup in Canada
- The History of Baked Beans in Canada
- Meat Pie Magic: The History of Tourtière
- Classic Canadian Dishes: Pouding Chômeur
- Classic Canadian Dishes: The Lobster Roll
- Classic Canadian Dishes: Saskatoon Pie
- Classic Canadian Dishes: Cod au Gratin
- Dessert in a Bag: The History of Figgy Duff
- Canada’s Forgotten Dessert: The History of Flapper Pie
- Raisins or No Raisins? Canada’s Superstar Tart