Poutine — my love, my everything — is tantalizingly unkosher. My love for it could only begin once I left home. I was raised to follow the laws of kashrut, even if my family has denied that fact each time I’ve written about it in this publication. This means I couldn’t eat the mesmerizing congress of meat and dairy, nor any meat found in a non-kosher establishment. But its slow-cooked, informal qualities are everything I yearn for in a food. It nourishes the stomach in a way that melts the stomach of the frugal college student within.
La Belle Patate was not my first poutine, but it’s now etched into the history of my life and will be played before Jewish St. Peter (Lenny Bruce) on my way to heaven’s gates. La Belle Patate inspired my reverence towards the alchemical concoction of curds, gravy, and fries, and I am humbly grateful.
Keen-eyed readers who follow my pieces (hello Bubbie) may notice the level of objectivity I try to maintain within my pieces. I wish each assertion in these food reviews to be a reasonable description of the meal, without undue hyperbole or veneration. I apologize to you, because I can’t promise this here. Poutine is not a culinarily complex dish that I could write about like an orchestra crashing into distinct combinations of perfectly recherché ingredients. Its simple ingredients make a heartwarming and filling food for cold or inebriated nights. I can’t ask for anything more in a dish.
Poutine has few literary odes. Born from the frostbitten experimentation of the Quebec dairy region, for years, people saw it as an unrefined drinker’s snack. It became popular for restaurant workers and late-night fare, greasily spreading across the province to become a direly-protected Quebecois folk food.
One could describe poutine as the simple addition of gravy atop fries and cheese curds. Similarly, one could describe a burning sunset in late July as light hitting air molecules. People who cannot appreciate either’s beauty should look inward and wonder if their world can hold magic within it.
To say that it’s “Canadian” is an oversimplification which invites hordes of angry francophones to your door. Actual political careers have died by this misrepresentation. The famous quote I’ve seen repeatedly in my monastic research into this art form comes from Paul Wells in 1990. He (seemingly exasperatingly) wrote, “it’s become Quebec in a bowl, a shorthand symbol for the province which finds its way into editorial cartoons, comic monologues, and anywhere somebody needs to evoke Quebec and get a laugh at the same time.” But it’s defended by a French-speaking knights templar who take up the sword for their heritage.
La Belle Patate is as Quebec-ish as my Montrealer mother. This tiny wooden location is tucked into Davie — the Vancouver street that has clubbing stewed in its very essence. It looks like a small town pub even as respite from rave weary travellers finding epilogues to EDM-filled nights. Habs merch, statistics, and signs surround the patrons in glass booths or one high communal table with plastic stools. You can barely see the kitchen tucked behind a small window, where one or two people intently pour gravy or deep-fry spuds.
Unlike brisket places in this town, which use American license plates to condescendingly appeal to Yankee authority, La Belle Patate earns them. These acolytes of the curd earn cheesy iconography through dedication to their craft. They serve poutine and nearly poutine only — bold customers can add bacon, onions, chicken, or even eggs in seemingly limitless combinations (if limitless was 37).
The restaurant fills me with familial nostalgia for childhood moments where I’d head to town with my grandparents in Montreal. When I got to La Belle last week, I ran into a man who looked suspiciously like my grandfather. We talked for a bit; he looked different from my grandfather and talked distinctly. Still, I couldn’t shake the feeling that my Zadie flew in from the YUL. Something about this place bubbles my own brief white-and-blue memories to the front of my brain.
The medium smoked meat poutine ($14.95) is a huge tray of deep amber gravy, adorned with fries and bright white curds like stars in a beautiful, fatty sky. Flecks of Montreal-style smoked pastrami are deposited in the meal like flecks of crystal. You can feel the heat of the dish hit you moments before the smell of the gravy lazily glides to your nostrils.
Poutine is the only food that humbles the eater. You kneel at the altar of fat and melted cheese, praying for forgiveness on behalf of your currently-clogging arteries. La Belle Patate made a triumphant church for this. The gravy was beefy and flavourful, covering crunchy fries that melted with the curds into the heaping, wonderful, warm mass in front of me. To call it liquid gold would blemish the poutine’s shine.
The smoked meat tasted like every perfect pastrami piece I grew up with. I felt each grain of beef break under my tooth. It was smoky and tasted almost bread-like. It was corned beef derived from delicatessens deep within Jewish Côte-St-Luc. Despite this goyishly unkosher meal, I couldn’t stop thinking of the Yiddish cuisine I grew up with. It was nice not to feel like I was running away from those traditions.
We devoured our poutine like it held secrets to eternal life. It was heavy in a benevolent way — sitting in front of a campfire and gently being rocked to satiation. It left us tired, happy, and with Quebecois reverence for this food.
Total Cost: $14.95 per-person (pre-tax and tip)
Atmosphere: Small pub-like restaurant. Medium volume music, near club area of Vancouver.
Location: 1215 Davie St, Vancouver, B.C. V6E 1N3
Standpoint Statement
This article is a review, which is a story about art or culture, written from a critical perspective.
Extended Byline
Elena Massing was this story’s backfield editor. Saba Majd was the copy editor. Raul del Rosario took the photos.
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