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Review: New York Fries’ Butter Chicken Poutine

New York Fries’ Butter Chicken Poutine — basically, a standard fries, gravy and cheese-curd poutine, with the gravy replaced by butter chicken.

I’m going to go right ahead and call New York Fries’ Butter Chicken Poutine what it is: fusion food for the Canadian masses.

So what is it?

First, for our American friends: Poutine is a Quebecois fast-food delicacy that combines French fries, cheese curds and gravy. It’s a life-shortening concoction that’s slowly becoming a national dish. Even out west in Alberta, poutine isn’t hard to track down.

NYF’s butter chicken poutine, then, is a revised version of the above. Fries on the bottom, followed by cheese curds, then topped with a thick butter chicken sauce that replaces the gravy in the poutine recipe.

Yes, yes. But how does it taste?

The fries are great (up to the usual NYF standard), the cheese curds squeak (a crucial poutine test), and the butter chicken itself is good, but nothing to write home about. The sauce is flavourful but not spicy-hot, and the meat is a mix of chunks and stringy bits of chicken that have slowly become part of the texture of the sauce.

This thickness of the sauce poses a problem. In regular poutine, the gravy slowly rides the gravity train down to the bottom of the dish, ensuring some sauce all the way down to the last fry. With the NYF BCP, the sauce is too thick to filter down through the fry holes, leaving the toppings trapped on top. As long as you eat away at the fries strategically, this isn’t a problem. But if you’re not careful, you’ll burn through the toppings before finishing the fries.

In summary, it’s a nice multicultural Canadian mix that tastes pretty good. Totally worth trying.

RATINGS AND DETAILS

Cost: $4.75 for a small butter chicken poutine.

Value for cash money: Not bad. It’s a small meal.

Availability: Limited. Check the NYF website for locations that serve it.

Nutrition?: No nutritional information on the NYF website for the butter chicken poutine (when last I checked). The normal small NYF poutine — not the butter chicken version — has 710 calories, 38 grams of fat, 19 grams of protein, a fair bit of calcium and whole hell of a lot of sodium. It is NOT a healthy snack, and I doubt this version is much better for you.

Fork or fingers?: Fork! Eating regular fries with a fork is ridiculous, but the sauciness of poutine demands a utensil.

The verdict: Strangely delicious. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but I wound up loving it. But please, please, please — consume in moderation.

Yeah, that's the small size. Eek.

6 Comments

  1. Wow. Two of my favorite heart attack foods fused into one. I am almost scared to try it. Almost. Which location did you try these at?

  2. Wow it looks like diarrhea on fries in a cup

    • Ha! Well, not all delicious food is pretty food, and not all pretty food is delicious. Poutine is a bit of a sloppy mess at the best of times. The orange-yellow lighting where I took this shot doesn’t help matters, either. But yeah, if you can get beyond the appearance, they’re pretty good.

  3. I must say that when I want poutine this is my go-to. Nothing beats New York fries butter chicken poutine…its a strange combo but it works. I hear the pulled pork poutine is also very good

  4. Why???

    I saw that because I made butter chicken tonight lol

    I haven’t had poutine in years