Dave got the Arleta Poutine, Foster Burger’s take on the traditional poutine Galvaude with roasted chicken and peas. I’m sort of not into peas. But Dave will pretty much put peas on anything. ANYTHING. So he was in pea poutine heaven. We each had our own plate and I ate every last bite.

Foster Burger’s poutine has everything you could want in a poutine. Perfect fries, great gravy, which we learned takes three days to make. It’s because they add magic or something to make it super delicious. Three day magic. My one tiny quibble was that the curds were still chilled by the time the plate got to our table and they never really melted into a gooey mess. But they were fresh and springy and tasty.

We’re already planning future visits to dive into the varieties we didn’t get a chance to try: Brooklyn Poutine (curds, gravy, smoked pastrami), Woodstock Poutine (curds, mushroom gravy, mushrooms, onions, and garlic), and Clinton Poutine (curds, gravy, pork belly, bacon, pastrami, sauteed onions!).

It’s fantastic to see a Portland restaurant finally devote significant space on their menu to a variety of poutine concoctions. Foster Burger does not disappoint.

Foster Burger
5339 SE Foster Road
Portland, OR 97206
Phone: 503.775.2077
Web: www.FosterBurger.com

These “putsins” they ate were an Acadian delicacy also known as poutine râpée. They are a combination of grated and mashed potatoes with chopped salt pork in the center, which are boiled for two and a half to three hours. Yum. I mean, yuck. I guess they are served with either ketchup or with maple syrup.

As I googled around to refresh this dim childhood memory, I was stunned, STUNNED, I say, at all the people who seemed to know about this dish. And there were plenty of recipes. We were actually able to talk to my grandparents over the summer about how to make putsins (as they pronounced it) and despite the grossed out memories of my childhood, we endeavored to have a go at making our own poutine râpée.

First, you have to peel a lot of goddamned potatoes. More potatoes than you’d even need for a regular meal. Then you take a third of them, chop them up, and boil them for mashed potatoes. You take the other two thirds and you grate them. We tried a fine grate for this attempt, as we had tried to make poutine râpée a while ago and they fell apart. We thought maybe it was because the potatoes weren’t grated and amalgamated enough.

You also have to squeeze as much water out of the grated potatoes as possible. We thought this might also have been a contributor to our previous failure. All the recipes say to put the grated potatoes in a cotton cloth and squeeze the ever loving shit out of them. We did this last time. It was a lot of work, and the taters were still too wet. This time, we did as the ancient Acadians did, and used our salad spinner that we got at Bed Bath and Beyond.

Here are the shredded potatoes on the left, and the mashed potatoes on the right. We formed them into balls, and they still seemed pretty loose and incohesive. The problem we had last time was that the putsins fell apart as they boiled in the water. This had been quite a labor investment at this point and we did not want to have to order a pizza for dinner.

My mom said she remembered one of her aunts wrapping her putsins in cheese cloth to keep them from falling apart. This seemed like another elaborate step, but we were determined we would be eating putsins by any means necessary. To hedge our bets however, we also decided to bake a few of our potato balls in the oven. Not traditional, but maybe we could reinvent this dish for the 21st century. Maybe it would be a hit. Maybe we’d be famous.

Here they go in the oven.

Here they stew in the pot. They take TWO AND A HALF HOURS to boil. Holy crap. Do you ever wait that long for food? Ever? We were confident that these were going to hold together this time with the cheese cloth. We let them simmer. And we waited and we waited and we waited. And because we were thinking in regular food prep timing, we didn’t think ahead to realize it would be 9 pm by the time these things were ready.

We waited for two hours and decided to take our chances.

There they are. They have been described as “gray,” “gelatinous,” and “slimy.” We found all those things to be true. And while I never ate them as a kid, they seemed immensely familiar. I have deep heritage.

They were…well…pretty god awful, actually. They were fairly bland, as described in the various recipes we found. The potato was dense and chewy like gnocchi, but stickier. The baked ones were drier and puffier, but not much better. I was figuring the fat from the salt pork would melt a little, but no. There were still big pieces of rubbery white fat in there. We had no ketchup in the house, so we figured we could use poutine gravy, meant for the other Québécois dish that we know so well. Dave has a lifetime supply of poutine gravy packets. You know, in case the apocalypse occurs. Or Jesus comes back.

We had one or two of these and called it a night. After all that work. What a hearty people the Acadians were, taking all that labor and over two hours of cooking to somehow make meat and potatoes inedible. I didn’t think it was possible.

I still love my grandparents, though.

This poutine was not your average Quebecois junk food. It arrived in front of us as perfectly uniform bricks of golden yellow fries, and a light, dare I say, dainty white cheese sauce. This meal, like others I’ve had at Irving Street Kitchen, was like a piece of art on a plate. Of course it is delicious, you can tell before you even lift your fork. The gravy had the authenticity and heft of duck fat, which was a pleasant and faithful interpretation of the junk food we love. But this was no sloppy meal you scarf down at the end of a night of Pabsts. This was the most classy poutine we’ve had yet in Portland.

Dave and I were fortunate to strike up a conversation with Brandon our bartender (@brwise on Twitter. He’s also a contributor to the Daily Blender). He talked me into a fabulous libation and I don’t recall what it was, except it was infused with Stumptown Hairbender Coffee and some house made bitters. And it was delicious. That’s all I remember. And Dave had a Calvados, neat.

And a short time later, in front of us arrived a Butterscotch Pudding with Brown Ale Caramel, Crème fraiche and Caramel Corn with Curried Peanuts. Oh. My. Good. Lord.

This was not normally a dessert I would order of my own volition. Because I would think, meh, butterscotch pudding. But upon first bite, I realized this was the best dessert I’ve had in a long, long time. And we eat a lot of goddamned dessert. I would order this butterscotch pudding all day, every day. I just barely kept my composure to keep from licking the inside of the jar it came in. Okay? It was fricken GOOD. It was all fantastic. I like Irving Street Kitchen. It even felt like a date. Which I think is illegal once you get married. Good thing we weren’t arrested.

Irving Street Kitchen
701 NW 13th Avenue (at Irving Street)
Portland, OR 97209
Phone: 503.343.9440
Web: www.IrvingStreetKitchen.com

Part of my heritage is French Canadian, and it just seemed wrong that something like cholesterol could impede my ability to celebrate the food of my ancestors. Those brave French men and women who landed on the shores of New Brunswick after their long journey across the Atlantic, and warmed their hand around the, um, deep fryer.

There’s nothing we like more than a food related challenge, and we endeavored to discover if there was some way we could make poutine less bad for us. We knew there had to be a way.

We already knew how to make our own oven fries. We started with cute little taters and cut them up into thin wedges.  We used 3/4 lbs potatoes = 240 calories (0 fat). Instead of using lard or duck fat as the traditional recipe requires, we used a tablespoon of canola oil. Canola oil is the least bad vegetable oil. One tablespoon canola oil, is 124 calories, 13 grams fat, one gram saturated fat.

For some reason, Dave has probably more than a lifetime supply of poutine gravy mix. He has a friend that brings him gravy packets every time she visits Montreal. If we ever have to live through nuclear war, the second coming, or a zombie infestation, we will certainly not lack for poutine gravy.

The strange thing is that this gravy is vegetarian. It’s made with soy material, vegetal material and brown stuff. And it’s pretty tasty. You dump it in a pan and add water and stir. 1 cup poutine sauce = 60 calories (0 fat)

Next was figuring out the cheese and this was going to be harder. Cheese is just inherently not good for you. Normally, the cheese curds sort of make the dish but they are so bad for you. It’s a goddamned conundrum.

We didn’t want to try any sort of fake cheese or non dairy cheese. We are trying to be healthy, but we didn’t want eating this to be torturous. So we opted for a block of part skim mozzarella. It wasn’t going to have the squeak of cheese curds, but it was going to melt really nice. Two oz part skim mozzarella = 180 calories (12 grams total, 7 grams saturated)

Here’s our fries, getting toasty in the oven. These are the easiest thing in the world to make. You don’t need pre-made frozen fries. You can make them yourself. And then you know what’s in them. And you can feel superior and self righteous.

Look at these! Professional!

I should say that when I say “we” when describing the cooking in this post, it really means “Dave.” But “we” is such a handy phrase.

Below, we have assemblage action. Hot fries, cheese cubes, and hot gravy.

Often, people miss and important step at this point. Yes, you can start eating right now.

But it’s better to cover the whole plate and let the heat melt the cheese into the gooey lumps it was meant to be. You don’t want chewy cheese, do you? The answer is no. You don’t want chewy cheese. You want melty cheese.

Here’s the money, right here. Fricken yum, people.

We added fresh parsley, because we like to be dainty. It was totally edible. Delicious, even. Even kind of fun. It was a decent, meal-sized amount. Here was our estimated calories for this dish, which we shared: 600 calories, 25 grams fat, 8 grams saturated fat. For comparison, here is the dietary info for a small serving of poutine from McDonald’s in Canada. Or here is one from Burger King. Holy crap, they are trying to kill us.

Ours was largely guilt free. Somewhere in our ancient, lizard brain, we might realize, “There’s no duck fat up in here!” But we must temper our lizard brains, because we are no longer running across the tundra with spears, trying to catch our dinner.

I always marvel at at sleek, hyper engineered new restaurants in overwhelmingly giant spaces. I always wonder who has the money to create these ventures. Someone has a vision. But I wonder how they pay the rent.

Everything we put in our mouths at Lincoln was well executed and tasty. The menu is downright dainty. We started with fried fennel fritters with a Meyer lemon sauce. And of course, we ordered poutine, which came with a lamb gravy. We had never seen lamb gravy on poutine before. I normally don’t order lamb if given the choice, so we were curious how this was going to taste.

Oh my. I’m pretty sure this photos doesn’t make it look delicious. But it was. Oh, how it was. There was a lot of ultra-tender bites of meat, with hearty, well bodied, and dare I say soulful gravy. The curds appeared to be cheddar and the fries were up to snuff. It was a delight. The kind of dish you regret having to share. The kind of dish where you wish you could go back in time, to alert your past self to ditch the boyfriend for a night and take yourself out to dinner so you don’t have fend off the poutine with your fork.

We squeegeed up the last bit of gravy with the last bit of our fries. Ultimately, it is better to share such a dish so that you have equal chances clogging your arteries. We continued to nosh, he on a panzanella salad and I on a spaghetti squash gratin.  I have lately come to enjoy spaghetti squash quite a lot, and historically have never refused anything made into a gratin. The combination seemed like it might have been virtuous. But it was not. It was utterly decadent. It was heavy and rich and wonderful.

In total, not the healthiest meal I’ve ever had. As the waiter cleared our plates, I joked that I would next order a stick of butter. Instead, (yes, we kept going), we had a slice of orange cake and a “44 Cordial.” This was a house made liquor, starting with rum, and orange and coffee beans. The orange is slit 44 times, and 44 coffee beans inserted into the slits. Then it is left to infuse for 44 days. We liked it. It was sweet, but not sickly. It was citrus, but it was warm and buttery from the coffee beans. We resolved to try making it ourselves. We will let you know in 44 days.

In all, Lincoln had a hip atmosphere, suitable for a date, and interesting, well-crafted food that was a pleasure to eat. And that poutine [Update: happy hour menu only]. Wow. Perhaps our favorite so far in Portland. We will be back.

Lincoln
3808 N Williams No. 127
Portland, Oregon 97227
Phone: 503.288.6200
Web: www.lincolnpdx.com