La Banquise

Ah, La Banquise. An establishment known for its many poutines and for the fact that its open ALL THE TIME!

I brought my French friend, Clem, because, well, he had neva eva tasted this Quebecois tradition. I gotta say I'm not a fan of the brown sauce/cheese curd poutine but I went along for the sake of showing him the place.

As per usual, the place was packed + a line up! Dsamn! And it was only 7 PM!!! But hey, I gotta face the fact that La Banquise must be busy around the clock!

We were greeted with all smiles by the cute little waitresses (it was funny: a friend of mine works there and she has a bunch of Banquise pics on FB so I actually recognized some and knew their names... haha) and were seated about 4 minutes later. Note: if you sit outside, you can't drink alcohol! Pop music was playing + a couple songs that made me think back to my high school days (yay!).

OK, food. Obviously we were there to eat poutine.

I had the Taquise: kind of a mexican-québécois mix :) OK, so it's fries (duh), cheese curds (duuuuh!), brown sauce (come ooon!), tomatoes, guacamole and sour cream. I have to mention that you can change your sauce for 1 $ or more and I should have done that. First off, i'm not a fan of the brown sauce. Secondly, I really don't think it fits with everything. Especially not tomato, avocado and sour cream. The cheese was, well, des crottes de fromage comme on dit si bien en bon québécois! It actually fit quite well with everything else and wasn't too salty. The fries were nice and hot, not smushy (technical word, don't worry 'bout it) but not too hard. The sour cream was perfectly smooth and so was the guacamole. Oh it was goohood. Just the right amount of silkiness, the right amount of salt. The tomatoes were a bit blend though.

Service was great throughout. You'd think that since they are so gosh darn busy, that the service would go to shit but nope! Our food arrived on our table 5 minutes after ordering it and our waitress came to check on us twice. OH, and they all have short shorts. WHAT??? :)

And now, the scores!

Food: 6

Service: 8.5 (she forgot our glasses of water)

I truly don't know if I'll go back. Mainly because I don't love poutine with ze brown sauce. But hey, who knows!?