POUTINEVILLE - POUTINE

POUTINEVILLE - A POUTINE LOVER'S DELIGHT

Their website: http://poutineville.com/
Three locations - Subject of current review:

Poutineville Ontario
1365 Ontario Est
Montréal, QC H2L 1S1
514-419-5444

Price Range:  ~$20-30 per person including one drink, meal, tax, and tip




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Mouthwatering Summary: Customizable poutines plus a range of gourmet specialty poutines will make you drool...
Meal to try: Their signature poutine - The Poutineville (poutine with braised beef and a wine sauce!)



So, I basically have a wee little bit of a terribly addictive personality now and again. When I first discovered Poutineville a couple years back I became a touch...obsessive... Seriously, within the first month of discovery of this wonderfully-decadently-delicious place I notched up like 12 visits. I just couldn't help it... Of course, I wouldn't have done it if Poutineville weren't so damn GOOD.

The concept is simple. Basically, upon arriving, you:

1. Sit down, are given a menu that lists all the possible ingredients (four different types of fries, dozens of veggies and meat options, and many different sauces) with which you can have a custom-built poutine
2. Check off the ingredients you want, and they make it for you; or,
3. Pick one of their specialty poutines, some of which are dishes adapted from secret family recipes (or so one of the owners told me...). Most of them are just jaw-droppingly fantastic!

I'm going to begin by listing my absolute favorite poutine here, the Poutineville. It's fries topped with braised beef, mozzarella, and wine sauce ($12 for small, $15 for large - it's the small one pictured below, because I'm on a diet):

This thing has been around since the start and is perennially at the top of their menu. And with good reason: The braised beef is wonderfully flavorful and tender, and the wine sauce is exquisite. I constantly have to stop myself from getting two...

Another great one is the Godfather - Italian sausage, roasted red peppers, marinated eggplant, cheese curds, mozzarella and meat sauce, and au gratin ($12 for small, depicted here):

Is this poutine ever well-named! It tastes like every great home-cooked Italian-Canadian meal I've ever been served by culinarily-gifted Italian neighbours. It's positively teeming with flavours that are unmistakably Italian-Canadian. I could eat this all day long. Come to think of it, I might've, once. :P

What follows is an example of the customized poutine. For this dish, my eating companion selected hot dog wieners, spicy hot peppers, red wine sauce, and smashed potatoes: (prices vary depending on how you build yours - so I kinda forget the cost on this one, sorry!):

It was spicy...

Now, lest you think that healthy eaters are out of luck here, allow me to show you one of their salads - the Greek salad ($9 for small, plus $3 for the grilled chicken):

The foundation of this salad is made of tomatoes, green peppers, cucumbers, red onions, Kalamat olives, feta cheese, and homemade Greek dressing. Not terribly exciting...until you add the grilled chicken. Dear LORD the chicken makes the salad! Make sure you get it with the chicken! It's tender and juicy and wonderfully-seasoned!  (Yes, I'm incorrigible!)

They also have a rotating array of desserts. On my recent outing, they served an excellent banana chocolate cake:

For those of you who are bigger eaters than me (and I've been assured you exist), Poutineville has a lovely special on Tuesdays! After 5pm, you can have all the poutine you can eat for $15 plus taxes on five of their poutines. It. Is. GLORIOUS. And for the truly monstrous appetite, might I recommend the Crise Cardiaque? It's 10+ pounds of fries, sauce, meat, and cheese. You typically would get this if you're a team of folks, but apparently there was one brave soul who managed to devour it by himself...

Lovely. I just ate supper before writing this and now I'm famished again. Must... resist... the siren call... of... poutines...
(I think I might lose this test of willpower...)

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