Short Stuff: Poutine: Canada's Pride

Poutine is just one of those comforting dishes that's a must have when visiting the great nation of Canada. Is it good for you? Nope. But who cares right? See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.

• 0:04Josh Clark?

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• 0:39Josh Clark?

  Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh and there's Chuck and Jerry's here. Wait, no, she isn't. Jerry's not here. Dave's not here. We're left on our own, like a pair of losers. And this is short stuff.

• 0:53Speaker 02

  That's right. A big thanks to howstuffworks.com, the Canadian encyclopedia and food and wine magazine.

• 1:00Josh Clark?

  Wow.

• 1:01Speaker 02

  For the information that I called about Canada's national dish at 740 calories and 41 grams of fat per serving. The french fried, brown gravy, cheese curd, squeaky delight that is poutine.

• 1:19Josh Clark?

  Yes, I love poutine. How about you?

• 1:22Speaker 02

  What's not to like?

• 1:23Josh Clark?

  I don't.

• 1:24Speaker 02

  Of course I love poutine. I can't eat a lot of that kind of thing.

• 1:26Josh Clark?

  Well, no, who can?

• 1:27Speaker 02

  Cause you know, I'm trying to look, be healthier and look better. And poutine does not lend itself to that.

• 1:34Josh Clark?

  You look, you look both, by the way.

• 1:36Speaker 02

  I appreciate that, but in Canada, you gotta eat some of that poutine.

• 1:40Josh Clark?

  You definitely do. Whenever we visit Toronto, I'm always on that stuff.

• 1:44Speaker 02

  You have to.

• 1:44Josh Clark?

  But one reason why we can't eat it as much is because we live in the southeastern United States, whereas poutine was originally invented in Quebec, which can get awfully cold in the middle of winter. So it actually makes a lot of sense to eat a higher calorie diet during that time like a bear.

• 2:05Speaker 02

  That's right. It popped up in the 1950s in the snack bars of rural Quebec and started gaining in popularity, you know, it kind of spread out from there. As we'll learn, it eventually started popping up in fast food menus in the 1980s, like McDonald's and Burger King and stuff like that in Quebec, and then eventually over the border into Ontario. And nowadays, you can find it all over the world, even though if you want, you know, if you want that OG, you gotta get it somewhere in Quebec.

• 2:36Josh Clark?

  Right. And if you're a purist, you definitely have to get it from Quebec. That's just the way it goes.

• 2:43Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 2:43Josh Clark?

  So there's a bunch of different families or people who lay claim to inventing poutine, but they all hail from the same area called the Centre de Québec, which means center of Quebec, which is ironically in the south. And that is a really important place because that's where the fromageries, the cheesemakers who made these squeaky cheese curds that are essential to poutine, if you're a poutine purist, where they're made. And there's the first guy who we'll meet is from Warwick in Quebec, and his name was Fernand Lachance of Café Ideal. And he said that he

• 3:25Josh Clark?

  first added curds to fries because one of his customers, Eddie Lenesse, said, hey, add some curds to these fries.

• 3:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, that was in 1957. And he replied in French, I'm not even gonna try it, but he replied in French, that will make a damned mess. But he did it anyway, served it in a paper bag. It became pretty popular and people started kind of customizing it, adding vinegar and ketchup and stuff. And then six years into that, he started to serve that on a plate because it was such a mess. And customers were like, hey, they're on the plate now. They're not in this bag staying warm. They're getting cold. So he said, oh, dump some brown gravy on that stuff and said, how you like that for warm?

• 4:08Speaker 02

  But in French.

• 4:08Josh Clark?

  But in French. Do you want me to try the French quote?

• 4:11Speaker 02

  Sure. Oh, sure.

• 4:12Josh Clark?

  Savate faire un mode de poutine.

• 4:17Speaker 02

  Nice.

• 4:18Josh Clark?

  Uh, so, okay, we've got our first, first entrant, Fernand Lachance, courtesy of Eddie Lanness. This is 1957? I guess, no, 1963 is when he added the gravy. 57 is when he added the curds.

• 4:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's when poutine, uh, complete poutine was 1963. Uh, but our next guy comes from, uh, in Drummingville, Jean-Paul Roy. And he said, no, I had a place, uh, drive-in restaurant called La Roy Jussep. And in 1964, which was clearly a year later, uh, he said, I've been serving fries with this sauce, though, since 1958. I called it patat sauce. And he said, customers started adding cheese curds. I was selling those at the snack counter. And they started dumping those in there. So he started doing that and added it to the regular menu and named it fromage patat sauce. And, uh, kind of a fun little side note there. Apparently, he couldn't find a container,

• 5:13Speaker 02

  um, in his province, like, that could even hold this stuff. It was so heavy. So he had to go to Toronto to source a vendor who could provide these sturdy containers.

• 5:21Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 5:22Speaker 02

  Pretty fun.

• 5:24Josh Clark?

  Um, so poutine, actually, the name of it is, um, it essentially means messy or mess, at least in slang in Quebec, for sure. Um, but people say that it's probably or possibly, one of the etymological theories, is that it hails from the, um, English word pudding. And not pudding like you and I think that has the jiggly skin off top that you have to peel off when you take it out of the refrigerator. This is pudding as in like figgy pudding, which is essentially like a mixture of various foods, sometimes fig, uh, and that it can be kind of messy. It's not like, it, it's just like a, um, a hodgepodge, just kind of mixed together, that kind of messy. And so, um, poutine, possibly from puding, uh, is where this whole thing came from.

• 6:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, or maybe one of the other like 10 to 15 explanations of root words like French words like pate or how would you say that?

• 6:20Josh Clark?

  Poutine?

• 6:21Speaker 02

  Poutine, which is a potato ragout. So that, you know, no one agrees on that, kind of like a lot of the stuff that we talk about with these origin stories of foods. A lot of people will lay claim and no one agrees on who the, who the person is, although I'm sure there will be people write in and say, no, it's definitely for sure one of these people, or maybe even someone else.

• 6:39Josh Clark?

  Yeah, so what we do know is that it showed up from the more rural area of Centre du Quebec to Quebec City in 1969 at a place called Ashton Snack Bar. It made it to Montreal in 1983 and then it started to spread far and wide from there. They say we take a break and we come back and we trace poutine spread like so much gravy flowing over a pile of fries.

• 7:07Speaker 02

  Great.

• 7:21Speaker 03

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• 7:50Speaker 04

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• 8:35Speaker 04

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• 8:55Speaker 02

  All right, so where we left off, poutine was spreading like brown gravy through the streets all over Canada. Different variations started to pop up, like Italian poutine with spaghetti sauce or sausage. Instead of like the gravy, veggie poutine. There are regional variations. Apparently Montreal style has smoked meat.

• 9:18Josh Clark?

  I've had that.

• 9:18Speaker 02

  But, you know, have you? Yeah. How do you like it?

• 9:21Josh Clark?

  It was great. I mean, it's hard to mess up poutine, in my opinion.

• 9:26Speaker 02

  Yeah. But, you know, as far as traditionalists go, it's just the straight up curds and gravy.

• 9:31Josh Clark?

  There's also one more thing, I'm sorry. There's also a restaurant in Toronto, I can't remember, also I totally name checked, but they made like Korean poutine.

• 9:40Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 9:41Josh Clark?

  I can't remember what made it Korean, but it was the bomb.

• 9:44Speaker 02

  Oh, okay.

• 9:45Josh Clark?

  I think it had some sort of smoked meat on it as well.

• 9:48Speaker 02

  All right, I'd try that. By the 70s, poutine had spread to the United States and New York and New Jersey. They called it disco fries and used shredded mott's instead of those cheese curds. Because, you know, one thing we mentioned, it was made where it was made because you could get those cheese curds fresh. And they say like, hey, man, if you're, if you're keeping these curds for a couple of days, they don't squeak anymore and it's not the same. So this disco fries thing is an abomination.

• 10:16Josh Clark?

  Yeah, but it's a great name.

• 10:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, pretty good.

• 10:20Josh Clark?

  So it first started to spread to national restaurant chains back in 1985. There was a Quebec fast food franchise called Fritz, F-R-I-T-S. And they did not last very long, but they seemed to be on record as the first national chain, or at least large regional chain, to feature poutine. But the one that really kind of kicked it off was Burger King. One of their franchisees, Jean-Louis Roy, back in 1987, was like, I really want to offer poutine Burger King. Please let me offer poutine. And the Burger King thought on it and said, wish granted. And so this first Burger King franchise started selling

• 11:03Josh Clark?

  poutine. And I guess it sold well enough that Burger King was like, we're going to sell this in all of our Quebec restaurants.

• 11:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, McDonald's followed suit afterward. They added it to the menu in 1990, and then in Quebec only, and then expanded to the rest of Canada. And got to shout out Hardee's. Canadian fast food joint Hardee's started doing so in 1992. And then something happened in the 2000s, when sort of elevated comfort food became a thing. And people were like, let's, let's try and charge, you know, 35 bucks for chicken pot pie.

• 11:40Josh Clark?

  Edison bulbs everywhere.

• 11:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, Edison bulbs, you know, lighting up rooms all over the place, like barely. So they said, yeah, let's, let's do that with poutine. And I think Martin Picard of, what's that restaurant, Josh?

• 11:54Josh Clark?

  Au Pire de Cochon.

• 11:55Speaker 02

  That's right. He was the first supposedly, or at least first to become known for serving elevated poutine, when he invented his foie gras poutine.

• 12:07Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 12:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 12:08Josh Clark?

  And so other people are like, oh, foie gras, how about lobster? How about braised beef? And yeah, as you, as more and more like professional chefs kind of did their own spin on it, it got further and further away from what it was originally. And I don't know who spoke to a chef Hugh Atchison from Montreal, I believe, right?

• 12:29Speaker 02

  He grew up in Ottawa.

• 12:31Josh Clark?

  Okay, so, but he grew up on poutine. He said there was a poutine truck parked down the street from his high school, which. I would have been in big trouble every day if I had grown up like that. But he's basically saying like, the people who were coming up with these spins on it probably had never even been to Quebec, had never had actual poutine. And that it's not supposed to be gussied up. It's like a very simple, basic, street food. And he was really angry. I think in the interview, they said that he kept pounding his fist and eventually took off his shoe and was pounding his shoe on the table while he was shouting about this.

• 13:12Speaker 02

  Oh, I don't believe that one. Hugh Atchison, great person. He has restaurants here in Atlanta and Athens, Georgia. So he's a, he's a top chef guy, too. So I love all.

• 13:22Josh Clark?

  What's he, what's he, what, what, in Atlanta?

• 13:25Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, he, you remember the coffee shop at Pond City Market? That was his.

• 13:29Josh Clark?

  Okay. Yeah, great.

• 13:30Speaker 02

  Downstairs and his Empire State South in Atlanta is Hugh Atchison's.

• 13:35Josh Clark?

  Edison bulbs.

• 13:36Speaker 02

  And, oh yeah, Edison bulbs. And then Five and Ten in Athens is his restaurant. Cause Athens has got some like legit good restaurants now.

• 13:44Josh Clark?

  Yeah, Five and Ten was great. That, that went in where, what was the, the like super threadbare restaurant that had been there for a million years before Five and Ten?

• 13:55Speaker 02

  Ah geez.

• 13:56Josh Clark?

  It was like an Athens institution.

• 13:59Speaker 02

  Oh, I don't know. I was just there. I tried to go to Five and Ten, but they were booked up because I went to those R E M shows again this year. And then Athens is just still one of my favorite places to go.

• 14:07Josh Clark?

  Great town.

• 14:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, but this is about Quebec and Canada. And Hugh Atchison closes out his quote by saying, it's just really comforting garbage food.

• 14:16Josh Clark?

  That's awesome.

• 14:17Speaker 02

  Which I love.

• 14:18Josh Clark?

  So I guess that's it, right?

• 14:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, I got nothing else. You know, go visit Canada, go to Quebec and order some poutine.

• 14:26Josh Clark?

  Yeah, but even still, just maybe also if you can't make it to Quebec, like look up how to make as close an approximation as you can and enjoy it that way.

• 14:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think that there, I think General Muir here in Atlanta serves poutine. So, you know, I might give that a shot.

• 14:41Josh Clark?

  Sure, sure. Since Chuck said he's going to give it a shot, everybody, that means short stuff is out.

• 14:51Speaker 00

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