poutine is french for “messy glutton’s wet dream”

poutine, originally uploaded by suddenly.

when you visit certain cities, you can’t leave without trying their signature dish. for new york, it’s a slice of pizza; chicago, a hot dog; and for montreal, it’s poutine. (i never got to try poutine on my last trip to montreal because like i said, la korean bus tour only took us to lame-o korean restaurants.)

as you would expect from a region with a heavy french influence, the food in montreal is quite tasty. it also seems to be super amped with butter, cheese, cream and other fatty add-ins. i suppose this is meant to create a layer of blubber in your body that is thick enough to get you through the hellaciously brutal winters that montreal is famous for. a case in point, i had an amazing french onion soup at restaurant l’actuel that was one third broth and two-thirds cheese gratin topping. it was delicious but holy moly, i could feel cardiac arrest approaching with each bite

i think it’s that fattier-than-thou philosophy that spawned poutine. for the uninitiated, poutine is a dish of fries, cheese curds and gravy. french fries are a guilty pleasure for me but when you add gooey cheese curds and hot savory gravy, dang, that’s enough to send my eyes rolling into the back of my head.

the S.O. knew a great place that would deliver the poutine straight to our door. isn’t that just the height of laziness? if you’re about to consume something with enough calories to fuel michael phelps for a day, you ought to at least expend 50 of those calories to go pick it up your damn self. but yeah, we were feeling pretty beat after a week of sightseeing and socializing and wedding attending.

so this is how we came upon the grand poutine from alto’s, a fast food joint popular with the mcgill university crowd. it arrived in a foil container all hot and delicious-smelling. we pried off the lid to reveal a mess of fries bathed lovingly in the cheese curds and gravy. the cheese curds had melted into the gravy and with each forkful of fries, they created a tangle of stringy, stretchy goop straight up to our greedy mouths.

that was how we ended our last night in montreal, and our first leg of the great “north american wedding tour.” one down and two more to go. next wedding stop: toronto.