Dirty feed 101, do have gallons of salt and fatty fried food, don't have any vegetables or the like and do have vast amounts of said dirty feed for a relatively reasonable price. If you are looking for some solid dirty feed and some great people watching make your way to Smoke's anytime before 4 am nightly. However if you are looking for some gooey-melty-gravy filled-delectable poutine, you might want to try somewhere else.
A solid poutine is a little like a solid building, they both rely heavily on the foundation. Where the "solidity" of a building escapes me, poutine is pretty standard, you've gotta commit and get the fries right.
Being wishy washy on fry size and consistency is a sure fire way to fail. Either go thick and crunchy, or skinny mini. Smoke's fries are on the proverbial fence, being that they are droopy midsized and pretty much flavourless. They almost taste as though they are stale the moment they come from the fryer. This could be a combination of the state they are in before they hit the fryer, or the weird cardboard container they come in after.
Beyond the obvious fail of the fries, the poutine itself never really melted, for some reason though the gravy was scalding it stayed in a very solid state til we were finished gorging. The gravy was pretty salty and I wonder if I might have had better luck with the nacho poutine. But I stuck with the veggie standard, and probably won't be back to try the other options any time soon.
I do however appreciate that they cater to vegetarians, and thus I must bump up their star power. Other than that though I've really had better.
Bottom line...I'm wondering how they came to franchise themselves so fully, were the fries better in the days of yore???