Poutine – Fries Topped With Gravy and Cheese Curds

Poutine - Fries Topped With Gravy and CheesecurdsMy buddy Jeff and I drove down to Chicago recently to see Matt Skiba of the Alkaline Trio and Brendan Kelly of the Lawrence Arms play a show at the Bottom Lounge. Since traffic around Chicago is usually pretty ridiculous we left Milwaukee fairly early, and ended up getting to the show about an hour before the doors opened. Luckily the Bottom Lounge has a pretty cool bar and restaurant so we grabbed a booth, ordered some beers and checked out the menu.

One of the specials that night was poutine, which is a dish consisting of fries topped with gravy and cheese curds. I’d never tried poutine before and the only thing I really knew about it was that its pretty popular in Canada, so I figured I’d give it a shot. A whole country can’t be wrong about something right? I mean, Canada brought us Degrassi, which is easily one of the greatest TV shows ever. Then again they also brought us Celine Dion and Bryan Adams, so maybe their judgment is a little suspect after all…

Since the poutine at Bottom Lounge was only $5 I was expecting the order to be fairly small, so I was pretty surprised when the waitress walked up to our table with a plate containing a pile of fries that was nearly the size of a football. After digging in I’ve got to say that I’m definitely with the Canadians when it comes to poutine. This stuff is great. The hot gravy even melted the cheese curds a little bit, which made it even better.

The only downfall of eating so much poutine is how tired it made me. A giant pile of fries covered in gravy which is then washed down with a couple beers isn’t exactly a pick-me-up, and isn’t a very great idea when you’ve got a 12am two hour drive back to Milwaukee ahead of you. I even made a stop at White Castle on my way home to see if some delicious sliders could cure my tiredness, but they only seemed to worsen it. Weird…

5 Comments on Poutine – Fries Topped With Gravy and Cheese Curds

  1. EatWisconsin
    December 20, 2010 at 10:48 am (13 years ago)

    Nice. I have a poutine related post coming to EatWisconsin this week. More of a restaurant review but we did have poutine and it was awesome.

    Reply
    • Nick
      December 20, 2010 at 11:03 am (13 years ago)

      Yeah, I can’t believe I never tried it before. It seems like it should be more popular in Wisconsin since it consists of fries covered in cheese curds, but I don’t even remember ever seeing it anywhere in Wisconsin.

      Reply
  2. Maria
    December 20, 2010 at 2:03 pm (13 years ago)

    Nick you’ve got to try the poutine at Red Dot. It’s awesome!

    Reply
    • Nick
      December 20, 2010 at 2:20 pm (13 years ago)

      It’s funny that you mention that because I posted a picture of this on Twitter while I was eating it and someone asked me if I was at Red Dot.

      Reply
  3. Melissa
    July 20, 2015 at 7:38 pm (9 years ago)

    Where im from we call that ccg. Chips cheese and gravy especially loved by teenagers and those coming home so drunk they dont know what the hell they ordered but it tastes good. 🙂

    Reply

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