With an unexpected interruption for a global pandemic, Mom\u2019s Kitchen has been serving breakfast, lunch and dinner since 2013, but owner and cook Manon Amyot also runs two food trucks that makes hers a very busy schedule, especially in the summer.<\/p>\n
Up a few stairs from the street and into the casual restaurant on Landry Road, there\u2019s the POS system behind some plexiglass, a cooler case for serve-yourself-soda, a dining area replete with pool table and sundry and assorted tchotchke and bric-a-brac that include an ancient Singer sewing machine and old-timey cash register, the latter two remnants of a bygone era.<\/p>\n
And Mom\u2019s menu is chock full of classics, too, from a full sheet of breakfasts \u2013 including baloney and cretons maison \u2013 club sandwiches and \u201chot hamburg\u201d platters, whistle dogs, fish and chips, lasagna and spaghetti and meatballs.<\/p>\n
What also caught my eye was \u201cOld Canadian Food\u201d on Amyot\u2019s business card.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen we cater, we try to offer old-fashioned food like your grandmother used to cook,\u201d says Amyot, who started her career in the kitchen when she was 15 and preparing meals for the family of a local entrepreneur.<\/p>\n
Indeed, classic diner fare and home-style meals. But I was interested in another version of classic: what Mom\u2019s calls poutine du fermier available from a short list of specialty poutines. It was all the more intriguing because the menu notes, \u201cWe are famous for our Farmer’s Poutine.\u201d<\/p>\n
Granted, it\u2019s a self-proclaimed distinction, but Mom\u2019s prepares a lot of poutine \u2013 especially during the summer with those two trucks \u2013 and the famous dish is high up my list of favourite snack foods, though one that I remind myself to tuck into with some discretion.<\/p>\n
Poutine is ubiquitous across Canada. I couldn\u2019t possibly count the number of times, in several different cities, I\u2019ve scarfed a cardboard takeout clamshell packed with crisp, piping hot fries, melty cheese curds that I describe as sounding \u201csquidgy\u201d when your molars start to compress them, and the drippy gravy.<\/p>\n
Over the past decade or so, there has been an evolution: the fries that form the foundational starch of the poutine have morphed into a blank slate for a host of unique flavours and ingredients: butter chicken poutine, lobster poutine, gumbo poutine and pizza poutine.<\/p>\n
While I occasionally dive into that riot of possible, and sometime improbable, ingredients, in my new home here I get a different feeling about poutine \u2013 that I\u2019m a bit closer to the origins, the epicentre, of the uber-rich and indulgent snack food and not just geographically.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t tuck into the view that poutine is Canada\u2019s national dish, but it certainly is more than just a regional one.<\/p>\n
Regardless, its origins have assumed a mythic status that dates to 60 years ago in Quebec when the word was purportedly first found on the menu at L\u2019Ideal in Warwick, about two hours northeast of Montreal.<\/p>\n
According to poutine historian Sylvain Charlebois, in his book \u201cPoutine Nation,\u201d the gravy wasn\u2019t added until 1962, and only then as side dish to the fries and cheese curds. It was possibly Jean-Claude Roy, of Drummondville, who created the trifecta in 1964, says Charlebois.<\/p>\n
In a poutine pilgrimage in The Toronto Star in 2008, \u201cFood Sleuth\u201d Marion Kane tried to trace the origins of the dish to Drummondville, Victoriaville and Warwick.<\/p>\n
Poutine arcana aside, the dish is just a scrumptious and seriously indulgent treat, to say the least, including when you deviate from the purity of the original triumvirate of ingredients into the heady space where foie gras, pulled pork or grilled andouille sausage might make an appearance.<\/p>\n
At Mom\u2019s, Amyot has staked a proprietary claim to her version of the dish, among a half-dozen varieties \u2013 and the farmer connection is its own myth, she explains.<\/p>\n
\u201cA young farmer from La Ferme Ouellette used to come and eat at a food-stand I had in Sarsfield,\u201d Amyot says. \u201cHe asked me to put all the meats into one poutine. When I then served it at the Russell Fair, it was in demand.\u201d<\/p>\n
It is, indeed, a meat-laden platter that sits before you with what must be a half-dozen meats intermingling with your fries and cheese curds all of which is smothered beneath a rich brown gravy.<\/span><\/p>\n To start, the hand-cut fries are twice cooked, blanched and then fried hot and crisp to order (they were very good); the cheese curds are from, of course, St-Albert Cheese, an historic cooperative that started in 1894.<\/p>\n A maven of poutine, perhaps, but Amyot is reluctant to divulge the specific ingredients and techniques that she uses, offering only that some of the meats are marinated and slow-cooked over the course of a day.<\/p>\n I rooted around the bowl of morsels and found some pork breakfast sausage and some crispy bits of roasted pork and beef which gave the dish some added texture.<\/p>\n There is a wide reach to Mom\u2019s poutine: her trucks were at the recent Orleans Poutine Festival and are scheduled to pop up at events in Wendover, Maxville, Chesterville, Metcalfe, Carp, Kanata and Shawville, Quebec.<\/p>\n That\u2019s a full summer up until October for poutine, the classic Quebecois \u2013 and Canadian \u2013 dish that Charlebois maintains should be nominated as the first Canadian dish to be declared \u201cIntangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity\u201d by UNESCO, just like Neapolitan pizza and the Parisian baguette.<\/p>\n I will second that nomination.<\/p>\n Note: Before visiting Mom\u2019s Kitchen, check with the venue regarding dish availability and hours of opening. With an unexpected interruption for a global pandemic, Mom\u2019s Kitchen has been serving breakfast, lunch and dinner since 2013, but owner and cook Manon Amyot also runs two food trucks that makes hers a very busy schedule, especially in the summer. Up a few stairs from the street and into the casual restaurant on Landry […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20,"featured_media":99982,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-99981","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-affaires"],"acf":[],"featured_media_global":[],"yoast_head":"\n
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\nFood writer Andrew Coppolino lives in Rockland. He is the author of \u201cFarm to Table\u201d and co-author of \u201cCooking with Shakespeare.\u201d Follow him on Instagram @andrewcoppolino.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"