Review: Chuch Bistro, Vegan Poutine

I’ve been meaning to try Chuch Bistro for a while, a vegan Thai restaurant on the Plateau Mont-Royal that gets rave reviews from vegetarians and meat-eaters alike. It has a nice terrace on Rue Saint-Denis with a minimalist chic decor inside. Amidst the usual South-east Asian suspects like pad thai, papaya salad, and a variety of tofu dishes are four poutines:

Syrian Poutine at Tazah

It’s Poutine Week in Montreal and there are 30 poutines competing for the top prize. Earlier this week, I tried out one of these contenders: the Syrian poutine at Tazah. This is a new restaurant that took over the spot once occupied by La Cantine, which once served the best poutine in town. I wondered to myself if the new owners had absorbed some of that old magic.

Gourmet Poutine in Toronto

Gilead Café, Toronto

Word on the street is that Toronto, for all its multiethnic gourmet offerings, hasn’t quite mastered Québecois poutine. This may be due to a cheese curd problem – although Ontario produces cheese curds, mostly in the vicinity of Ottawa, they’re hard to find in the GTA. Nevertheless, the poutine at Gilead Café came heartily recommended, so I decided to check it out.

Duck Confit Poutine from Lucky’s Truck

Food trucks are easing their way back into Montreal. Banned in 1947 for hygiene reasons, the ban was kept up for years through the pressure of restaurant lobbyists who feared street food would threaten their establishments. However, with a gourmet food truck revolution sweeping North America, the voices of Montrealers have drowned out the lobbyists. This summer, trucks were confined to public squares and festivals but one hopes that regulations will be eased up over time. In the meantime, join the thousands on this Facebook group fighting for more street food in the city.

Lucky’s Truck is one of the many new food trucks to hit the city this summer. I’m not sure how they managed to avoid Quebec’s language legislation (Is there a loophole for truck signage?) or why they chose to do so (Is it managed by French expats who think English business names sound cool?), but these are secondary considerations. The primary consideration is that they serve up duck confit poutine and that it tastes great.

Review: Déso Burger

The founder of Déso Burger dreams of building an empire, but so far there are only two restaurants in his province-wide chain. This wannabe chain from Saint-Bruno-de-Montarville prides itself on flat burgers and curly fries. The Quebec City branch sits in the old YMCA building on Place d’Youville in a prime bit of real estate once occupied by Tribune Café (yet another uninspiring and generic coffee-and-panini café – no great loss to the city).

Review: Patates Plus

Although Val Belair has been part of Quebec City since 2002, the former “Ville de la nature” feels like the boonies. 23 km from downtown, it is the last bit of questionable civilization before hundreds of miles of vast hinterland. People get around in oversized pick-up trucks and park snowmobiles on the front porches of their pink vinyl bungalows (circa 1989). A few old farmhouses have not yet been swallowed by the ugly sprawl of boulevard Pie IX, the suburb’s main drag, but it shouldn’t take too long. Unsurprisingly, the parking lot is full and the bike racks are empty.

L.A. and the French dip sandwich

Double-dipped lamb sandwich at Philippe’s The Original

The French dip sandwich is to L.A. what the cheesesteak is to Philly, and what the poutine is to Quebec – a trashy, iconic local specialty that seems less inspiring than it is.

What is it? Basically it’s a soggy meat sandwich. You can get it with roast beef, roast pork, leg of lamb, turkey or ham. It is served in a nice crispy bread roll and – here’s the gimmick – dipped in natural roast gravy. You can order it single-dip, double-dip or wet, corresponding to the amount of gravy you want on the bread. “Wet” is probably the way to go. And yes, it’s tastier than it looks.

Why do they call it a “French” dip? This is a good question, especially as roasts are traditionally very British. It bears no ressemblance to anything I have seen in France, nor to the roast beef sandwiches sold in Quebec. It does bear a slight resemblance to the traditional Quebecois Hot Chicken (pronounced “ott-shi-keuhn”), but no direct link. Its Frenchness comes from supposed inventor Philippe Mathieu, a Frenchman who migrated to L.A., where he apparently came up with the idea for the sandwich around 1918.