notes on poutine #5

This is it. The last notes on poutine before the end of my trip. This series will be back if I ever eat poutine again or if I go back to Canada. It’s been a fun ride and writing these all on my phone has been an interesting experience but really proves I dont need any other device when I travel. Also I’ve been stuck at the airport for like 5 hours lol HELP THIS DELAY IS CRAZY.

Before I talk about the last poutine I ate (fabled airport poutine) I need to talk about how I got hungry last night. And we DoorDash Popeyes poutine.

This isn’t our first brush with fast food poutine. As you might remember my first notes on poutine was the super-terrible McDonald’s poutine. But Popeyes was different. They delivered. Whether it’s bringing a new chicken sandwich competitor to the table or bringing some heat with their poutine — they know what they’re doing.

The Cajun poutine, in true DoorDash fashion, arrived at a different door than ours. After scurrying to fetch it, we opened the innocent-looking box to our mushy Cajun flavored cheese covered fries.

My hopes were not high. It was apparent that the gravy had soaked all the way through the fries and it was all just a big piece of everything at this point. But I decided to take a bite. In this bite I could feel that the fries once had a shape. The Cajun flavor added the slight saltiness and the gravy flavor permeates through the fry. The cheese also added to the flavor and texture, all blending to create an understandably mushy but fairly enjoyable package.

What can I say. I liked it.

I’m not sure how much the poutine was carried by the Cajun flavor, but I do know that I’d eat this again fresh. The flavor of it all blended together. Do I care that it was mushy? Kind of, but the texture was still there. And for that — it earns a 3/5. This may be controversial as it’s a mushy fast food poutine but they just blended the flavor better than the one in Calgary which was super salty still.

I also need to update the Calgary poutine score down to a 3. I feel like the balance in the flavor from Popeyes was just so much better than the Calgary one, but since we ate it in a 20-minute old state I have to give Popeyes a 3 and not much higher. But I would definitely recommend the Popeyes poutine over the Calgary poutine. And thus, I’ll put them at the same score for now.

This also leads me to downgrade middle of nowhere poutine. I wasn’t even able to finish it!! This along makes me think that it’s not worthy of being in 3-territory — I wouldn’t really recommend it.

And that brings us to this morning. Esteemed subscriber Vic and I got to the Calgary airport a little before noon and decided to eat some poutine to finish out the trip. We stopped at an airport restaurant fully expecting the most bleh poutine we had tasted on the trip.

Nope.

This one was balanced — the salt flavor was there but finally did not overpower everything else. The fries had just enough texture and crisp that even when they were soaked through with gravy you could still feel it. The gravy had flavor and didn’t just add salt, and the cheese melted beautifully to spread all around. I feel a little embarrassed— this is an airport, how can this be the top poutine I’ve had on my trip? But it’s what my stomach is telling me. It has everything down: the price, the gravy, the cheese and the fries. This one also had some green onions to kind of round out the flavor.

So where does this put us? I’m rating this a 4/5, and putting it ahead of the elk. The elk one was great but part of the score is that the elk helped. This one was all poutine. It’s what poutine should be. We ate it so fast it was all gone. And I don’t apologize for putting airport poutine at the top.

Nobody really thinks that McDonald’s poutine was ever gonna rate highly, but I did wish that middle of nowhere poutine did a little better. It’s food for weary travelers — I wish it gave a little more energy other than the salt storm it offered.

Popeyes poutine was a real surprise winner for me and it’s tied third with the Calgary bar poutine. I think the materials used in the Calgary poutine are better than the Popeyes one but the flavor balancing is just off. I’m not sure what the recurring salty taste is with poutine but I’m just not feeling it.

Finishing off here I do stand by my decision to rank airport above elk poutine. Airport poutine was cheaper and had more ingredient balance than the boutique elk poutine, which left us craving for gravy (gravings?) as we finished the bowl. But I do think theyre both 4s. The elk is a 4 because the bowl of poutine wasn’t as good, and the airport one is a 4 because it’s a solid poutine but didn’t wow me in any way.

Looking back I kind of wish I didn’t eat poutine like 6 times in the span of a week but gotta do what you gotta do in Canada! I think it’s left me with a weirdly bad feeling of poutine but I have heard that Montreal is the place to be for ACTUAL good poutine. But this is the current conclusion of notes on poutine — I hope you liked it and please let me know if you have any poutine suggestions!