The Great Poutine Taste-Off!

I finally had the chance to satisfy my 2-month-long poutine craving by sinking my teeth into mounds off crispy Yukon Gold fries smothered in beefy gravy piled high with squeaky cheese curds. We're not talking some crappy New York Fries, Harvey's or KFC poutine here but da real thing!!! To make satisfying my craving totally worthwhile, I got not one, not two but THREE poutines from 3 different places for the ULTIMATE POUTINE TASTE-OFF! To my dismay, all the raved about poutineries are all downtown (which is the reason why my craving lasted 2 months) so it only made sense to try all of them at once, huh!

To start off, I drove 24km from work to my first destination: Poutini's House of Poutine (while I was there, I got myself a Grande decaf mocha frappucino with two pumps of raspberry syrup with whipped cream from the Starbucks next door. Yes, I can feeeel the fat forming already, LOL).

Poutini's $6.99 + tax = $7.90

Next, was a 5km drive through downtown TO on Dundas which to me, transformed into something I can hardly recognize anymore to my next stop: Smoke's Poutinerie (which happens to be just across the street from Filmore's, heh).

Smoke's $6.99 + tax = $7.90

Meishan and Tinlop went to pick up the last of the 3 poutines from Great Burger Kitchen conveniently located next to my former high school.

Great Burger Kitchen $5.25 + tax = $5.93

The result? A LOT of poutine.

Now let's get on with tasting notes.

Poutini's was unfortunately sitting out for over an hour by the time we were ready to eat it so I'm not sure if it's the lack of gravy to begin with or it magically evaporated but it was dry. Cheese curds were definitely the squeaky type (win!) and the fries were as expected. I grade it a 2/5. The gravy lost.

Smoke's was OMG salty! The fries were nicely seasoned and generously drenched in gravy, cheese curds were squeaky but the gravy! OMG the gravy was soooo salty my tongue must have stopped working! If it was 40% less salty this would have been the win. I give it 3.5/5.

Lastly, Great Burger Kitchen. Sadly, my tongue is now broken so the gravy (as generous as they are with it) is pretty much tasteless to me at this point. Cheese curds were lacking (I'm guessing they just use plain old mozzarella) so no squeakiness here. Sigh... only a measly 2/5. The cheese lost.

Conclusions: 文生 decided his arteries were being clogged as he chowed down the CHO; Tinlop likes Great Burger Kitchen; Cindy doesn't want anything to do with poutine in a loooooong time; Meishan and I both like Smoke's IF it wasn't so salty. I think I'm pretty much done with poutine for a while too. Or, back to KFC...