Duck Poutine
May. 17th, 2008 01:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chickenfeetToday I broke my poutine duck with, appropriately enough, duck poutine. This momentous event must be put in context. Poutine is, canonically, a dish consisting of French fries topped with fresh cheese curds, covered with brown BBQ chicken gravy. It is mostly only eaten by Quebeckers and, even then, mostly only when drunk. This explains why, in twenty five years in Canada, I have never so much as tasted the stuff. In recent years though, fancy chefs have started to offer fancy versions. I have even seen versions featuring foie gras. Therein lies the key to today's story.
The lemur and I decided to go out for lunch. We both felt like a change from our more frequented lunch spots. We thought of Kultura because they do a really good eggy brunch but it seems that's all they do at lunchtime and that didn't hit the spot. However, on the webpage where I was checking this info there was a list of other places in the neighbourhood and one of them, Gilead Cafe, was completely unknown to me, as indeed was the street it was located on, Gilead Place, which turns out to be a sort of back alley in the unpromising area between King and Front just east of Little Trinity Church. Anyway, we gave it a shot. The actual cafe is rather nice. It's part of the burgeoning Jamie Kennedy empire and is a combo cafe, fancy deli and bakery. I think the kitchen also supports JK's event catering operation. It had a decent list of blackboard specials, one of which was confit of duck poutine. I decided to risk it. I wasn't disappointed. It came in a deep bowl. A generous helping of Yukon Gold frites had been topped with shavings of mature cheddar and lots of shredded duck confit. The dish was doused with an incredibly intense duck jus and topped off with some snippets of chives. It was really good. The lemur had a very good open face croque madame made with home cured ham which was morw than satisfactory. Including a pot of darjeeling tea, the bill was under $25. Pretty good value in my book
In other news, yesterday was a day of squee. I saw a deer by the Don river while out riding my bike and then went to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
sabotabby's birthday bash at McVeigh's. This featured the awesome miss sabotabby herself (of course) plus quite a few of her friends who are excellent company and I even got to argue with a completely unreconstructed Stalinist which I haven't done for years. Later on we were 'entertained' by possibly the worst Irish band in the entire universe. Drowning in green beer with plastic shamrocks shoved up their arses would be too good for them. They really had that Ed Wood "so bad it comes round to good again" quality.
The lemur and I decided to go out for lunch. We both felt like a change from our more frequented lunch spots. We thought of Kultura because they do a really good eggy brunch but it seems that's all they do at lunchtime and that didn't hit the spot. However, on the webpage where I was checking this info there was a list of other places in the neighbourhood and one of them, Gilead Cafe, was completely unknown to me, as indeed was the street it was located on, Gilead Place, which turns out to be a sort of back alley in the unpromising area between King and Front just east of Little Trinity Church. Anyway, we gave it a shot. The actual cafe is rather nice. It's part of the burgeoning Jamie Kennedy empire and is a combo cafe, fancy deli and bakery. I think the kitchen also supports JK's event catering operation. It had a decent list of blackboard specials, one of which was confit of duck poutine. I decided to risk it. I wasn't disappointed. It came in a deep bowl. A generous helping of Yukon Gold frites had been topped with shavings of mature cheddar and lots of shredded duck confit. The dish was doused with an incredibly intense duck jus and topped off with some snippets of chives. It was really good. The lemur had a very good open face croque madame made with home cured ham which was morw than satisfactory. Including a pot of darjeeling tea, the bill was under $25. Pretty good value in my book
In other news, yesterday was a day of squee. I saw a deer by the Don river while out riding my bike and then went to
sabotabby's birthday bash at McVeigh's. This featured the awesome miss sabotabby herself (of course) plus quite a few of her friends who are excellent company and I even got to argue with a completely unreconstructed Stalinist which I haven't done for years. Later on we were 'entertained' by possibly the worst Irish band in the entire universe. Drowning in green beer with plastic shamrocks shoved up their arses would be too good for them. They really had that Ed Wood "so bad it comes round to good again" quality.
