I've never been much of a poutine
person. This is why Poutine Week in
Montreal was so good to me: so many different types of poutine, so
little fries-brown-sauce-squishy-cheese trios :) It was, like, calling
out my name! Out of 30 poutine places, about 27 were offering
non-traditional poutine. That made me happy. VERY happy!
We
'teamed up' with one of my school friends and her bf and set out to our
first choice (out of 30) of poutine places on Monday. We chose La
Mauvaise Réputation. Who knew we would end up going to 2 other restos
that night and to... 7, yes, SEVEN others that week (for a total of
8...EIGHT!!!).
Every resto chose one poutine (or two) and it was either supposedly 5$ or 10$ (sometimes 13$ or 15$ $%/?&*). Every restaurant would give you a 'Poutine Week' card with a code on it and you could go vote for them on the Poutine Week website. This gave you points and then you could cash in your points. We actually both chose a 30$ gift certificate at Bota Bota. Not too shabby!
Every resto chose one poutine (or two) and it was either supposedly 5$ or 10$ (sometimes 13$ or 15$ $%/?&*). Every restaurant would give you a 'Poutine Week' card with a code on it and you could go vote for them on the Poutine Week website. This gave you points and then you could cash in your points. We actually both chose a 30$ gift certificate at Bota Bota. Not too shabby!
Here we go!
Mauvaise Réputation
Place:
New restaurant, very cute . LOVED how when you get in, there's somewhat
of an indoor abri Tempo and you don't feel the cold at ALL when you're
seated. Nice. Very nice. There's a big window right at the front of this
long resto and around it is a brick wall. Who doesn't love a nice brick
wall I ask? I think our favorite thing that day, in that resto, was
that right beside us, there was a shiz load of heating. May I remind you
that it was -40 ish outside. Brrrrr. The music was nice and neutral and
lounge-y.
Service:
The waiter was very nice and friendly and we got our [paper] menus
quickly--perhaps because we were actually the first ones in the resto. I
think it was about 6:30. Throughout our meal, the waiter also came back
to re-serve the water, which was nice. The menu itself was nothing to
write home about --hamburgers, noodle soup... We were obviously only
interested in poutine.
Poutine:
Pulled pork poutine. Pulled pork, caramelized onions, coleslaw, smokey chips. We decided to share 2 poutines and to add a couple
sides which are not really even worth mentionning here. Poutine got to
our table and we were immediately happy. It was in a square bowl and it
was vertically inclined instead of flat which made my eyes happy. Eat
with your eyes first, right? The main part of the poutine was the pulled
pork. I loves me some pulled pork! And the sauce the pork was marinated
in had a wonderful mix of spices. The coleslaw was actually a nice
addition to the poutine as it was refreshing and it went well with the
rest of the ingredients. Oh, and the smokey chips were great and a good
fit too but obvisouly not homemade. The caramelized onions, on the other
hand, were not so present. I believe there was only one... maybe two in
the entire poutine. Also, the sauce was a bit too liquidy and
agglomerated at the bottom. All in all, a very good start to what was to
be an epic (that's right, epic!) poutine run throughout the week. And
that pulled pork was a winner!
La Bêtise
Place:
If you didn't have the address to this restaurant, you would definitely miss it. Most definitely! When you come in, it looks a tad fancy but then you see the tv.
pfff.... damn tvs! Open kitchen, wooden everything including the menus
(except for the tables, which were plastic... seemed like they ran out
of money...), and lots of people! There were also huge drapes coming in
to 'take care of the cold' but that didn't work out as well as they had
planned.
Service: Nothing special. Got water and that's it. They were really busy.
Poutineville Beaubien
Service:
Took a while for the waitress to get to our table and longer to get
water. She was nice nonetheless and gave us a great suggestion concerning
which potatoes to have our poutine with. We took l'écrasé de patate
(specialty of the house. Other choices include sweet potato, julienne,
or 'coupe maison'): clumps or agglomeration of potatoes, which turned
out to be quite good. Quite freaking good. It did take a while for the
poutine to arrive to our already full stomachs...But our waitress was
nice and smiley and that is gosh darn important.

Lucky's truck

Place: Not much to say; it's a bar that looks like a bar. Lucky's truck is usually, well, a truck but in the winter, the food is served in the bar L'Abreuvoir on Ontario corner of St-Denis.
Service: Thing that sucked was that A: we needed to have a drink since we were in a a bar and that B: it wasn't clear who was serving what (food, drink?). The 'drink girl' came by quite quickly but the girl that was serving the food was nowhere to be found... for a while. Oh and we had to pay two different bills and since it's a bar, we had to pay cash. Pfff.

Score for food: average of 5.5 service: 5
Méchant Boeuf
Service:
The waiter was very nice, professional, and came to our table quickly. A
bit TOO quickly: there were two poutines and I couldn't choose which
one! He came back and took our order a couple minutes later.
Score for food: average of 7.5 service:8
Bevo
was nice. We were near the fire and the bored pizza guy :p
Service:
The waitresses wore white and red and were very smiley, which is always
appreciated! Our waitress came quickly and gave us glasses of water and
took our order. Wasn't that hard... 1 poutine for the two of us! The
one thing that was less appreciated was the fact that the waitresses
were talking (about their personnal stuff) between themselves in a corner, in plain sight. Gosh, I
hate that. Oh and the big boss was lurking the whole night which started
to make us feel uncomfortable!
Score for food: average of 7 service:8
Miss Prêt à Manger
*We
ended up there after having gone to Café Pavé (where we were ready to
eat an 'apparently amazing' veggie poutine) and noticing that it was
closed because of water dammage. Thanks for putting it on the website,
a**h****! May I just mention that it was EXTREMELY COLD and we froze our butts off just getting there!*
Place:
This place was tiny, with about 20 seats all together. Most tables were
high ... only a couple were 'normal height'. They make lots of good
things like yummy salads and sandwiches. That's why they are a caterer,
first and foremost.
Service:
There were two waitresses, I believe and they were everywhere at once!
It was even hard to get a price off of them... like the price of a glass
of wine (which turned out to be 10$ for a glass... tad expensive!).
Needless to say it was very busy during the lunch hour. The boss/owner
was running around, swearing because the heating wouldn't work. Funny
but unprofessional.
Poutine: Pulled lamb poutine. Yukon gold & sweet potato fries, braised organic lamb shank, shredded (Fermes St.-Vincent) organic Québec cheese curd, gravy from lamb juice and edible
floral garnish. I loves me some edible flowers! At this point, there's
such serious poutine competition! We thought Méchant Boeuf had the best
one but this one was winning top price! It was so damn good. Like
amazing good. Really tasty, with sweet potatoes in there (yuuum!), and a
bit of parsley, not only for deco, but to go with the lamb. Mmmmmm! I'm
thinking about it right now and I want to go back! The meat was so
tasty and juicy. Nothing dry there! And so well seasonned! Really, I
have nothing bad to say about this wonderful poutine! It was also such a
nice presentation with the flower petals! Another good thing was that
the plate was freaking hot when we got it. Hello? Can't everyone follow
in their footsteps? This is the right thing to do people! The only
downside was that this poutine was 15$ :/
Score for food: average of 9 service:6.5
Fabergé
Service:
Our waiter, who seemed to be more of a manager or even owner, was very
nice and friendly. He was very interested by the fact that this was our
eighth poutine of the week! And, he came to check up on us and the
poutine.
ps: They make maaad mimosas (you can actually choose other flavors besides orange juice)!
Score for food: average of 8 service: 8.5
That's it for us and poutine week. After rating the poutines on the poutine week website, we ended up ranking 15th out of 4356 something poutine eaters. Ain't that bad huh? I guess I AM a poutine person now!