Poutine: Great when it is fresh, absolutely disgusting looking and heavy after a 20 minute bike ride back to your house.
I came here to top off my 24 hour tour of Montreal before heading back home to NYC on the Amtrak Adirondack (an experience best left untried, in my opinion.) I decided I could not leave Montreal without tasting Poutine. So after getting a bit lost on my Bixi bike I finally ended up at la Banquise at about 10pm on a Sunday night. As expected, it was fairly packed, and I did have to wait about 30 minutes between getting there and actually being able to tuck in to my poutine.
I have to say that most poutine places in NYC do not get the cheese curds right. They are usually an afterthought and sometimes they just kind of chuck them in from a prep bowl that sits out all day (I'm looking at you, Pommes Frites in St. Mark's Place). This place does. But you cannot avoid what happens to them if you let them get cold.
So, it was AWESOME... until I got full. I decided to burn some calories off by biking back to the hostel but by then the whole thing was a congealed mess. I ended up having to chuck it, having no one else to pawn it off on.
Moral of the story. Eat excellent poutine here and make sure you eat it on site. Do not take it to go!!!