Ce N'est Pas la Poutine

Ah, poutine!  We Canadians are proud to call this guilty pleasure of fries, squeaky cheese curds, and gravy our own.  Nearly every restaurant in Quebec serves the dish, and it is even served as a special treat to our Canadian troops serving overseas.  Yes, it is without a doubt that we associate poutine with Canada.  There is nothing more wonderful than celebrating our heritage with a dish of hot fries covered in fresh, squeaky, white cheddar cheese curds and plenty of hot gravy.  Unfortunately, the cafeteria at VIU does not serve poutine.  Yes, it's on the menu, but what they will serve you is fries with a small handful of grated mozzarella and yellow cheddar, topped with a tiny amount of gravy.  To make it even worse, the poutine that I was served at the cafeteria had fries that were barely warm, and gravy that was not even hot enough to melt the grated cheese.  It was a very sad day for all Canadians, and I felt a strong desire to warn all the international students to avoid the poutine at VIU and go order some from the New York Fries franchise in Woodgrove Centre, instead.  How could our culinary instructors possibly think that it is acceptable to replace squeaky cheese curds with grated cheese on poutine?  How could they believe that it is acceptable to serve gravy that is almost cold?  Furthermore, how could our instructors not realize that even the Colonel serves nearly three times the same amount of gravy with the same amount of his fries?

In all fairness, the menu-creators at our school may have deliberately chosen to serve a small portion of cheese and gravy on our poutine due to the high amount of fat in this dish.  If that is the case then allow me to point out that low-fat cheddar is even squeakier than regular cheddar, and that fat-free gravy is a flavorful, and common, condiment in most restaurants these days.  Yes, it means that in order to counter-balance the cost of the low-fat cheddar the portion of fries will need to be reduced, but I think that the staff should consider that as a win-win situation, since it would result in even less overall fat content in this dish.

Now I could give a break to the culinary students for this sorry excuse for poutine, since one of my classmates has recently pointed out that I have had more negative food experiences on campus than positive ones, and she has a point, but I will not give a break to the instructors who are teaching our culinary students poor cooking techniques or incorrect recipes, which is the case in point.

It is obvious to me that our instructors need to learn how to correctly prepare poutine so that they can pass along this knowledge to their culinary students.  It is also obvious that they need to change how this dish is served.

For the sake of proper cooking techniques, I am sorry to say that I cannot recommend this dish at the VIU cafeteria.  I am, however, looking forward to the day when the recipe is changed and I can proudly recommend it to our international students.  In the words of Julia Child, "One of the secrets, and pleasures, of cooking is to learn to correct something if it goes awry; and one of the lessons is to grin and bear it if it cannot be fixed."  Trust me—this can be fixed.