When is Poutine Not Poutine?

To us, at least, when it's just fries, gravy, and curd-less cheese, it ain't poutine.

We here at The Mark are dedicated to bringing you the most rigourous analysis of the world's weightiest issues (...), which is why we refuse to remain silent over a supposedly harmless Canadian Business blog posting on poutine. Peter Nowak, who is working on a big piece on the Quebecois delicacy (our mouths are already watering), writes that a), Burger King is the nation's leading poutine retailer, and b), that the chain has exported the dish to Brazil as a side dish to chicken tenders and onion rings. Sounds delicious, right?

But here's the thing: the ingredients of the BK Brazil dish – fries, cheese, gravy, and bacon – do not a poutine make. It's lacking cheese curds, those squeaky scrumptious nuggets of artery death, that give poutine its signature texture and taste. Call us poutine traditionalists, but this Brazilian spin on our national dish can not be considered poutine without curds. Now, at no point in the post does Nowak directly refer to the so-called "Trio Supremo" as poutine; he deserves credit for his judiciousness. But in saying that Brazil has just "adopted the hottest thing in Canadian food since the Nanaimo bar," he implicitly endorses this creation as poutine. It is not. It is, at best, fauxtine. We must uphold poutine as being explicitly fries, gravy and curds, or else any old restaurant from Thurso to Timbuktu could throw Kraft shredded cheese on top of fries and chicken stock and say it's poutine. It's a slippery slope, and those pale imitations, which are sadly popping up far too frequently at low-level fast-food joints across Canada, are a disservice to the great province of Quebec and its proud culinary tradition. You wouldn't call ketchup and ground beef a bolognese sauce, just as the Scots will fight to the death to let you know that only whisky distilled in Scotland can truly be considered scotch. For the sake of defending Canada's nascent food culture around the world, we must maintain the same standard for poutine as well.