Smoke's Poutinerie

It's been awhile, hasn't it?

My sincere apologies! When the "break" rolled around, I found myself quite busy with things that I thought I wouldn't be busy with (school -_-...). But now that school has started, the procrastination of studying begins, meaning: more blogging!

I have been on many food adventures since the last time I blogged, and unlike my muscles or brain, my tongue has a very short memory so it cannot recall all the wonderful foods it has tasted. So, for today's blog I will talk about one of my favourite foods that I have eaten quite recently: poutine!

After reading reviews on it, and being a sucker for poutines, I always wanted to go down and try Smoke's Poutinerie out. But, since I constantly ran into my excuse of "another time", I ultimately put off ever going. Then one eventful day brought me down to the area of one of its locations (intersection of Spadina and Bloor aka The Annex). It was a very small shop, quite hidden actually. But, upon spotting the checkered head-sign and the distinctive stalker-eqsue-face logo, I knew where I was and that I had to go in to try.

 Pulled Pork Poutine (Large $8.99)

 Seeing that we were all very excited to try the poutine (and because someone else offered to pay...), everyone ignored their "no food past 10pm" diet, and decided on sharing a large pulled pork poutine. This poutine was filled with a whole bunch of chipotle pulled pork goodness, mixed with a generous helping of melted and creamy cheese-curds, thick crispy fries, and topped off a heaping portion of hot, rich gravy. Sounds good doesn't it? It was. The pulled pork was excellent. All the fine tendrils of pork were very tender, and perfectly encased the essence of the savoury yet slightly sweet chipotle sauce. The fries were on the more thickly cut side and quite crispy, yet simultaneously, slightly soggy and soppy as to absorb all that gravy goodness.What I particularly liked was that they were not salted (or as I tasted at least), so when combined with the rich gravy, it did not leave your lips pruned due to water deprivation. Another thing I enjoyed about Smoke's were their cheese curds. A common problem many poutineries face is the fact that their cheese curds come out more lumpy than "stringy-cheesy", making consumers find it rather hard to enjoy the poutine, considering that you have to stab your fork into a lump of segregated cheese and fries to get a combined taste. At Smoke's, though there were the occasional lumps of translucent cheeses here and there, the majority were well melted and mixed with the savoury gravy and fries, so when you lifted your fork, you got that mouth-watering cheesy string trailing afterwards, just waiting to be twirled around your plastic fork and shoved into your mouth.   

 Chicken Peppercorn Poutine (Small $6.99)

Seeing that I had promised C that we'd go together before he left for his internship, when he returned, we promptly headed over to Smoke's to eat. Since I enjoyed the pulled-pork poutine so much, I urged C to order that for himself. As for me, considering that I am a huge chicken fan, I knew I wanted something from their chicken selection. I had my doubts when I finalized on getting the chicken peppercorn poutine since its gravy was not what I was used to. My doubts, though, were soon erased once I took a nibble out of this delicious dish. The poutine consists of the golden, thick fries, tender grilled chicken pieces, soft and juicy sauteed mushrooms, and wholly topped off with peppercorn gravy and stringy cheese-curds. The fries, this time though, were slightly soggier than the first time I tried them, but nonetheless, it still satisfied my taste buds.The chicken pieces were slightly on the dry side (maybe because it was white meat instead of dark), and did not really contain any individual flavour of its own. The mushrooms were a wonderful addition, for they were very juicy and not at all soggy. They had a very simple flavour, and although they were drenched in gravy, the mushrooms were still able to contain that distinctive taste all fresh mushrooms seem to possess.  Now, for the gravy! I did not realize any real significant differences in the peppercorn gravy, and the original gravy Smoke's uses. If anything, the peppercorn gravy had more of a "kick" to it and a slight undertone of, of course, pepper.

a close-up picture. drool my food buddies. drool.

an additional photo of their wall

sorry for the position, i'm not sure why it's like this. C's pulled pork poutine and my chicken peppercorn poutine.

  

    Conclusively.  .   .. ...

food: 8.5/10  (slight inconsistency)
atmosphere: 9/10 (very relaxed)
service: 10/10
portion: moderate
 price: reasonable (<$10/dish)

Located at: 490 Bloor Street West
Phone Number: (416) 588 2873

happy eating!

 xoxo,
-A