WordsByNowak

I’m back from Montreal and getting through the pile of work that’s accumulated while I was gone. Regular blogging will resume next week.

In the meantime, if you follow me on Twitter you may have caught my pilgrimage to La Banquise, a Montreal institution that was recommended to me by several people as the best place to eat poutine. Being something of a connoisseur of the stuff, and given that I’m working on a story related to it, I felt it was my duty to check it out.

As with Smoke’s Poutinerie here in Ontario, La Banquise has some truly monstrous creations. I was told to try the T-Rex poutine, which has ground beef, bacon and hot dog slices on top of the fries, cheese and gravy. It was a killer meal that ultimately defeated me, making me feel like I was on an episode of Man V. Food. I got about 90% of the way through it before I was out-meated.

Was it good? Sure, although I couldn’t really tell how good the base poutine underneath was because of all the meat. Nevertheless, I’m already dreaming of my next visit to Montreal and the inevitable return to the restaurant.

On a related note, Postmedia News recently had a story about how Quebec’s big chicken chain, St. Hubert, is about to embark on a big expansion outside of the province and into other countries. I spoke to some representatives from the company a little while back and learned about this too, but I was more surprised to find out that St. Hubert restaurants no longer have poutine on the menu. You can order it on line and you can ask for it at restaurants, but it’s not on the menu.

The public relations representative was a little cagey as to why this was. She mentioned something about a cheese supply problem in Quebec, but I can’t say I bought that reasoning. Given the amount of poutine consumed in the province, it would be akin to a natural disaster.

I didn’t eat at St. Hubert during my few days in Montreal, but I feel like I should have so I could have gotten to the bottom of the missing poutine (rank and file employees will often tell you what PR people won’t). Alas, it’ll have to wait for another visit - unless somebody out there wants to check for me and report back?