If you conduct a quick Internet search on the origins of Poutine, you will find that there are many different stories with varying dates. I don’t know which story is authentic, and I doubt it makes any difference at all, but since I have many Canadian friends, I’m assuming the dish has something to do with beer.

I imagine a few boys tipping a few beers. Maybe they had been drinking most of the afternoon on a cold winter’s day when there was little to do but to wait out the stormy weather. One beer led to another, and they were having a good time, but eventually they got a bit hungry. One of the guys asks the bartender to make them some fries, though he may have ordered chips, depending on which part of Canada this occurred. In my imagination, however, he orders fries because poutine is a French word, and so I’m thinking the boys in the pub weren’t Anglophiles. A plate of fries, however, doesn’t seem like it will fill them up, so one of them asks the bartender to sprinkle cheese curds on the fries. Cheese and fries sounded good. The hot fries would melt the cheese. Another one of them thought that fries and curds might be OK, but it could be improved. He was probably pretty hungry, though drinking beer all afternoon leaves one with a full belly. He asked the bartender to smother the fries and curds in brown gravy. The bartender thought that sounded terrible and told them so, “"Ça va faire une maudite poutine!" ("It will make a damn mess!”). The boys insisted, and thus poutine was born.

Even if that isn’t the real story, it seems to match the strange, uniquely Canadian dish. You can get poutine almost anywhere in Canada these days. Most Tim Hortons serve it, and a lot of other places do as well. I think it is on the menu at McDonald's and Burger King in Canada. I wouldn’t know. I don’t go to those restaurants much in the US and have no intention of eating there when I’m traveling. The dish doesn’t look very appealing. However, one can imagine that after a few beers, it might seem a bit more enticing. Or perhaps it is a Canadian thing that folks from south of the border don’t understand.

I don’t feel the need to eat poutine every time we go to Canada, but when we stay for a few days, I usually end up ordering it with a meal at some point during our visit. It just seems like the Canadian thing to do.

I don’t know how Canadians feel about it, but it strikes me that there is a particular humor about the name of their dish. Poutine, translated from French, means roughly “mess.” It is a good description of what the dish looks like. However, no one translates the word anymore. It simply means fries and curds with gravy. Sometimes the poutine is prepared with cheese that isn’t quite the squeaky cheese curds that make the dish a unique combination of flavors, sounds, and textures. Melting cheese between hot fries and gravy is a bit of a disappointment when you have your heart set on authentic poutine.

I’ve heard that there is a variation with shredded mozzarella called “disco fries.” I have no intention of ordering that. The report of disco fries that I heard mentioned them being served in New Jersey, which I do not consider a place to go for authentic Canadian food. There are also variations, such as spaghetti sauce in place of brown gravy, called Italian poutine. If it’s Italian, it can't really be poutine, can it? And some restaurants feature vegetarian poutine with white mushroom gravy in place of brown beef gravy. I can understand that some people might like that version, but if you’re going to eat poutine, it seems to me that you ought to go for the whole experience.

Poutine purists may scoff at my labeling the dish as Canadian, but I enjoy it on my visits to British Columbia. Folks from Quebec don’t like having their unique culture turned into something generically Canadian. They are proud of their culture and language and have no intention of being assimilated into the broader culture. In a 2011 interview with Toronto Life magazine, Montreal chef Chuck Hughes lamented that, “over the past few years, poutine has become known as a Canadian dish, and it’s totally NOT a Canadian dish. It’s Québécois!”

I haven’t spent that much time in Canada, but I know that it is not a good idea to offend folks from Quebec. Any attempt to call things Québécois “Canadian” is seen as an attempt to tarnish the purity of Canadian Francophones. Calling a person from Quebec “Canadian” is likely to raise hackles and may end up in a fight. I’m pretty sure they are defensive about their cuisine as well.

My story about the origin of poutine is nowhere near the real story. If it were Quebec, beer probably wouldn’t have been involved. It might have been wine, but if it was, it was a good variety and not some cheap California knockoff. Quebecers are picky when it comes to wine. And they would resent any insinuation that they might have been a bit tipsy. They know how to hold their wine. They are people of culture and elegance.

If you’ve never tried poutine, I highly recommend giving it a try. If you want authentic poutine, I suppose you should go to Quebec to get some. On the other hand, if you don’t think anyone from Quebec is looking and you don’t hear anyone speaking French, you might get away with ordering and sampling a dish from a Tim Hortons. Genuine poutine might not be a fast food item, but you can probably get away with it in Western Canada.

I think former Quebec Premier Jean Charest summed it up best when he said of the dish: “I love poutine so much that I eat it as little as possible.”

I think I’ll follow his lead.