Poutine Crawl [Events]

2010 Jul 14
The good people at C'est Bon Cooking have organized a fantastic "Poutine Crawl" for this weekend, to help raise funds for cancer research on behalf of twitter.com/spoonsie . I was lucky enough to squeak one of the last tickets! Is anyone else from here going?

ref: www.apt613.ca

2010 Jul 14
You could say we're going. We helped to organize the fundraiser, modeling it after a similar poutine crawl that was held in Toronto.

Though, ours will be a walking tour.

Paola St. George of C'est Bon Cooking is an amazing guide of Ottawa's culinary landscape.

We are also currently raffling off a pair of tickets to the poutine crawl on foodiePrints.com in a series of "Ottawa, Do You Know Your Poutine" posts. Three opportunities have already been posted to enter the draw. Two more will be forthcoming.

2010 Jul 15
This looks AMAZING! Do you think doing another one is a possibility?

2010 Jul 15
I will be there! (Though I'm going to bike home and back to counteract the terribleness of the poutine.)

2010 Jul 15
FoodiePrint... i keep trying to win that daily raffle :-S

2010 Jul 18
This was a great event! Well organized, friendly, for a great cause and delicious.

Correct me if I make mistakes, hard to remember everything, but here's the rundown on what was served:

Stop 1 - Zaks. Breakfast poutine. Homefries, cheese curds, hollandaise sauce and a sprinkle of paprika. Not really all that good. Tasted fine, but wasn't really a poutine.

Stop 2 - Courtyard Restaurant. Thin crispy fries, duck gravy, duck confit, foie gras torchon. Tasted amazing. Was a little disappointed that the foie gras was revealed to be in the dish only after I'd started eating (ethical issues), but this was by far my favourite poutine of the day.

Stop 3 - Garlic Corner. Normal poutine. Thin fries, cheese curds, gravy. Average. Didn't register though when compared to the others on the crawl.

Stop 4 - Murray Street. No fries, instead spätzle, shredded mariposa duck confit, roast duck gravy, Glengarry “Fen Squeaks” cheese curds. I didn't like the spätzle, but everything else in the dish was super delicious. Beautiful restaurant too, and Chef Mitton explained the origin of the dish and how the restaurant works.

Stop 5 - Dunn's. Thin crispy fries, some sort of gravy, small chunks of smoked meat and curds. Very salty. Average.

Stop 6 - Island Flava. Thin crispy fries, gravy, curds, and jerk chicken chunks. The jerk chicken made this poutine super delicious. I will definitely have this again.

Stop 7 - D’Arcy McGee's. Advertised as a Guinness poutine. I had to leave (who knew eating so much poutine would take longer than expected, hehe) so I didn't try this variety.

Paola from C'est Bon Cooking did a great job of leading the tour.

Thanks to everyone who put this together. Great times.

2010 Jul 18
AD: We were on the tour led by Don and Jenn of FoodiePrints, and I know Courtyard definitely informed us of foie gras before we started in.

This was very well organized, indeed, and quite a fun afternoon. Although, I must say the bike ride home was painful.

2010 Jul 18
The biggest find for me was the Island Flava jerk chicken poutine. Very well done and super tasty!

The best *food* overall was the Murray Street spätzle dish. It certainly wasn't poutine but it was damn good!

The Courtyard poutine was very nice, maybe a tad salty, but perfect in the small portion we were given.

Dunn's and Garlic Corner produced very standard, decent poutines. Worth getting if you have a craving and happen to be nearby.

The D'Arcy McGee's offering was the least enjoyable -- even taking into account the fact that we were least hungry for it. I also found the $8 pints to be a little hard to take. $10 with tip for a Kilkenny!? You can get better at Pub Italia for less.

The Zak's breakfast poutine was standard home fries covered with hollandaise sauce and a sprinkle of paprika. Would be great with a poached egg. It is not poutine, of course.

The organizers did a stellar job! They were racing around behind the scenes to ensure success even during the event itself.

All in all, nice people, a great time, and money raised for a most worthwhile cause. Perfection!! :-)

2010 Jul 19
If you need to work up an appetite for lunch, just have a look at the awesome photos from this event on SimplyFresh's blog: simplyfreshottawa.wordpress.com

2010 Jul 19
AD - Great reviews for what sounded like a great event!

I'd love to hear the origin of Murray Street's spätzle poutine, if you're willing to share.

I'd hazard a guess that when they first opened they didn't have enough room in the deep fryer (or no fryer at all), so they went with the spätzle instead.

2010 Jul 19
Thanks for the shout out to my blog posting! I should have mentioned in it that all the food was donated by the restaurants and that our guides (and the group we were with) were incredible!!