The Boston Fry Tour

Not your traditional poutine, but I’d still eat the heck out of em.

From The Phoenix:

Poutine at Harvest
44 Brattle Street, Cambridge, 617.868.2255
$9
Keith Pooler, executive chef
Tell me about the poutine. It’s a bar-menu item? Yeah. I actually had a couple chefs come in last night and had it. It’s one of those chef kind of things. The funny story is, when I first put them on, every Canadian came in, had to have the poutine, and every single one had a comment on them. It’s a famous Canadian dish, and every [Canadian] place has it on the menu, and every place is a little bit different, so everybody has their favorite style. It’s kind of like the Lay’s potato chips. Lay’s tweaks their potato chip a little bit to accommodate different areas of the country, so that’s kind of like their version of Lay’s potato chips.
Tell me about yours. First they get fried and then they’re covered with cheese curd and baked for a little bit. And then we finish it with a little bit of chicken velouté. Traditionally, it’s usually a chicken gravy or a meat gravy that goes on it; I do chicken velouté, which is chicken stock thickened with roux. It’s a French gravy. And then we top that with a little bit of chopped scallions. One person has it at the bar, and usually you’re selling two or three more. It comes in a big bowl, and it’s good enough for two people. It’s great — you come in and have a beer and poutine, and it’ll almost fill you up.
When did you add that to your menu? That was about a month ago.
Why’d you put it on the menu? Well, I had a sous-chef that was French-Canadian, and he made it one day, because we were doing Wisconsin-style fried cheese curd, and when the cheese curd first came in, he goes, “Oh, I’ve got to make this.” And he made it and we had it one day. He did it in his way, and it evolved into the way it is now.