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| - When my partner and I saw that a restaurant entirely devoted to Poutine was soon to open in our neighbourhood, our concern quickly focused on our need to purchase more pants with draw strings or elastic waistbands. We envisioned a day where we would sit side-by-side on our rooftop patio, beer in hand, engaged in a fork-fight over a trough of gooey cheese curds covering a mound of greasy french fries drenched in aromatic gravy. We salivated. Our dream brought us to places with a wide variety of gravies, countless options for cheese curds and maybe even a dish involving sweet potato fries. After all, a 'house' of poutine suggested exploration; different rooms, nooks to peek in, crannies to uncover and drawers to open to find surprising contents. We imagined our narrow-minded vision of poutine would be blown apart with creative concoctions of flavour. We wanted sauteed mushrooms to be involved in whatever capacity they could.
Needless to say, we had not adequately managed our expectations. We walked into Poutini soon after it opened to find only limited options. Veggie or meat. Fries or baked potato. No variety of cheese curds. This was not the house we expected, more like a bachelor apartment of poutine.
Blame cannot be attributed to the owners of this establishment. Our vision is not theirs. However, I think it reasonable for the average passer-by to expect that a joint focused only on poutine would try pushing the boundaries of the genre.
At the end of the day, the poutine was good. It was not the best, but it was good. The staff was nice. There is nothing to complain about, aside of a deep sense that this restaurant has not yet met its potential. My partner and I look forward to the future. We dream of a day in which our now-nine-month-old son will see fries of all shapes and colours, curds of all textures and flavours and gravies from a variety of different animals or vegetable sources come together in an environmentally-conscious bucket of poutine greatness.
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