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2005-06-29: taste canada - poutine and street meat
{This entry was written by S. for Taste Canada}
Ten years ago, back when I was just a very young man, there were exactly two reasons to walk along the large artery that is St. Laurent: the girls and the alcohol. I didn't partake in the latter, choir boy that I used to be, but I was powerless against temptation from the former. So Friday nights were reserved to at least attempt to satisfy this hunger. The names of the bars? You just rattled them off to yourself and whoever was with you, just to measure your mood: Copa. Blizzarts. Jello. Le Biftek. Even Angel's, though Angel's has too many kids. Which one tonight? Decisions, decisions.
The nights ended predictably. Three or four of us, we found each other, defeated or cowed or bored. 2:30-3:00 am or thereabouts. We were too tired to be hungry in that way any more. Walking back home, our bleary eyes would only catch the important things: 99¢ Pizza, Ben & Jerry's, and of course the royalty: Burger King and Queen Falafel. Places like that. We'd always end up at one of these joints, always linger for an hour or so while we collected ourselves and got ready for the walk home and to bed. Sometimes, the place we ended up at was La Belle Province.
La Belle Province is a Québec institution. It's a small chain of restaurants that do mainly one thing: serve you poutine. They have other items on the menu, but those are irrelevant. It's the poutine that anyone ever goes to La Belle Province for. Poutine. POOT-sin, dans l'accent des Québecois. Picture this: twice fried potato slices, moist and crispy at the same time, topped with white cheddar curds, flavourful and slippery as enamel, and then slathered with piping hot, thick, dark, smoky gravy. You can describe it that way, or you can just use the shorthand version: "heart attack in a bowl". There are worse ways to go.
I remember clearly one of the first times I went to La Belle Province. I was with my best friend, a native Calgarian. I was still fairly new in Canada, an immigrant from a very different, very far away place. It was a late night in January. He was drunk beyond consciousness--as we were talking, he just dropped on the table and began to snore softly. When my order finally arrived, I took a look at him, then a look at the snow starting to fall and pile up on the sidewalk. And then I finally looked at the poutine sitting in front of me, the chunky frites swimming in greasy goodness, wisps of steam ascending from it and straight to my head. I dipped a fork, and I recall thinking to myself that night: "well this, this here, is Canada."
....
When I came to Toronto, I was still under the spell of Montreal. I came here for a better job, and that always seems like the worst reason to leave a place you love. Everything in Toronto seemed inferior by comparison. The streets, they were too big and too contrived, not nearly as charming and real as Montreal's. The cars were all too luxurious and shiny and reeked of too much new money. The women, they did not dress as thoughtfully or walk with near the élan. The people, they were all businesslike all the time. Queen Street may be young and hot and trendy, but it's no Rue St. Laurent. And there are these ridiculous hot dog stands everywhere!
Everything seemed wrong to me. None of it was good enough.
After a year or so in Toronto, I met Jennifer. (It's been nearly 4 years ago now). When I met her, it was clear that I was still hung up on my old flame: I still slipped sometimes and referred to Yonge Street as St. Catherine, I still said dépanneur when I meant corner store, stuff like that. I resisted change and hated reversing my opinions. Sadly and luckily, she didn't take any of it.
By our second date, she had successfully coerced me into eating sushi for the first time in my life--so she didn't exactly get a late start on things. Slowly, she showed me around her city. We toured it, by foot or by my old Toyota. And everywhere we went, on practically every intersection and multiple times on even smaller streets, we passed by these hot dog stands. Stainless steel stands with a barbecue grill built into them and a square umbrella overhead. Behind the stand, a man or a woman took your money and rotated hot dogs and sausages eternally. $2 for a jumbo all-beef dog, $3 for an Italian sausage. With all the self-serve toppings imaginable, from sauerkraut to bacon bits. And these stands, believe me, are everywhere, as common as taxis. They are there even in the dead of winter, when the whole apparatus remained exactly the same, only adding a small portable heater to keep the hot dog operator alive and in business. Toronto is odd that way.
Over the years, I've had quite a few dogs, or as the natives here call them, "street meat". They are quick, cheap, and surprisingly tasty. And it remains one of the first truly and uniquely Torontonian experiences I've had. Which, to such an incorrigible Montreal homer, is a blessing.
So for me, if there were a taste that defines Canada, or at least the urban Canada that I know via its two largest cities, it would be this: Montreal poutine and Toronto street meat. A pairing, I think, of which Hugh MacLennan would be proud.
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