notes on poutine #4

Calgary. I got some beef with you. You’re mid as hell. Just like your poutine.

Esteemed subscriber Vic and I headed back for civilization yesterday following an extremely long and dehydrated nine-mile hike. We had Chinese food when we got back to Calgary — but yall know what I wanted the most.

Calgary itself is honestly quite … boring? There’s a few cool things but everyone here is definitely trying to go to Banff. We stopped in downtown and Chinatown to maybe see if anything was going on. Not much? The local Chinese history museum was fairly enlightening but the only thing that stood out was the public library which was STUNNING.

But you know what wasn’t stunning? This poutine. At first when I bit into it I felt like it was great! But the more I ate it … the more mid it got. The fries were soggy, but the gravy was thick and well distributed. But the cheese was so salty. I don’t know if I just don’t like poutine or if I’m bad with salt or what. It really grinded my gears.

So yeah the poutine was honestly fairly uninspiring — especially considering that it cost as much as the Downtown elk poutine.

Considering that it was in some type of hip bar I’m not surprised at the outcome — Calgary and its poutine are as mid as it comes. Calgary’s so mid that Calgary Reddit is recommending Costco poutine over any restaurant. God dammit man. Yall are making me look forward to airport poutine.

Anyway this one gets a 3.5 as well. The gravy was really good and pumped it up to a 3.0 while the rest of the components combined for a 0.5. The portion sizing was also fairly generous and contributed to the decent score.

Because I’m marking this a 3.5 — I’ve made a choice to bump up Downtown elk poutine to a 4.0. The only thing I had against it was the them being stingy but when it all came together it came together well.

And now: some trip photos!