La Banquise, Montreal

I wrote this piece on a spur of the moment in the hope that my A A Gill-esque era of restaurant reviewing was just around the corner. As it is tangentially skiing related, I am sharing it with you here, for your enjoyment ...

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There’s a particular brand of cold that must be unique to Montreal. It was cold, really cold, bitterly cold, the kind that emptied the streets of life and even had the snow huddling together for warmth on the side of the road.

I don’t know what it is about Montreal that brings this kind of cold in the darkness of January, but here it was. Lying splayed across the grand St Lawrence River, the capital of French Canada has, so far, always been a city I had passed through, rather than stopped and admired.

It was ever thus that I found myself trapsing through the streets of the eastern edge of the city, fresh off the plane from London for a whistle stop tour of some of the lesser-known ski resorts of Canada. There’s a little ritual I have every time I come to Canada - that pilgrimage I was now following through the Siberian streets of the city - which is to seek out a dish unique to this part of the world; poutine.

There are plenty who will scoff at poutine, saying that it is nothing more than cheesy chips with gravy; I can hear them now, in fact, embodied in the staccato northern accents of friends from university. But there is far more to this than meets the eye.

First of all, it’s not cheese; it’s cheese curds, a kind of dried out, chewy, halloumi-like substance that once flirted with being cheese proper, but was pulled back from the edge in time. They have to be fresh, too, otherwise they lose the texture and consistency that makes this ingredient so unique.

The French fries have to be French fries, no doubt; there is no time for triple cooked chips here. And the gravy has to be just the right balance of dark and light, dark enough to stick to the ribs and provide a flicker of warmth on cold Quebec nights, but light enough to accept the cheese curds as part of a ritualistic dance that defines the dish above and beyond any single ingredient.

It is this ritual that sets poutine apart. The will-they-won’t-they dance of the cheese curds that start as solid, squeaky lumps before melting into the gravy, slowly, ever so slowly, so that a third of the energy of eating the dish is spent picking apart long strings of cheese.

You cannot get this combination anywhere else; trust me, I’ve tried. Therefore my trips to the Great White North always, always, involve a hunt for the original and, hopefully, the best.

Which is what has led me to – or rather, back to – La Banquise, a Montreal staple that has been dishing up humble poutine to hungry, cold, and quite often drunk students from the nearby university since 1968. Something close to a Montreal institution, La Banquise slings poutine 24hrs a day, serving a simple classic with a choice of over thirty different topping combinations.

I felt my way back to La Banquise more than anything, acting on fleeting residual memories of visits past. Exiting Montreal’s cathedral to 1970s semi-socialist metro systems, I followed the road off to the right, then turned left to follow alongside the park, then at the Y-junction turned left again.

Yes, this must be the place, I said under the neon sign and familiar Y-shaped entrance door.

This was a journey I had made before, the last time I passed through the city nearly six years ago and, despite my memory being rather good at these things, the briefness of the experience and the passage of time (and youth) meant that the details had become fuzzy.

Yes, this must be the place.

I was struck first and foremost by the simplicity. This was after all a diner, a fast food joint, meant to dish out quantity rather than quality poutine to the huddled, hungry masses. The diner vibe cut through everything, with corrugated metal-edged tables with plastic tops, big plastic menus, and plastic cups to go with your ginger ale; I half expected the poutine to be plastic, too.

Remembering at least something from my previous visit, I ordered a regular size rather than a large. The large here is extraordinary, capable of feeding the five thousand with cheese curds to spare. Poutine is a heavy thing, designed to fill you up on bitterly cold evenings, a stick-to-your-ribs, hairs-on-your-chest type thing. There is, emphatically if unbelievably, such a thing as too much of a good thing …

The second lesson had gone unlearnt, however. See, La Banquise, like many poutineries, offers a wide variety of toppings on your poutine. Toying between sticking to a classic, plain dish or taking toppings, I disregarded experience and went with sweet pepper and onion rings.

Now, I’m not saying poutine with toppings never works, but it’s best kept simple; hard, crispy, fried-within-an-inch-of-their-lives shards of bacon, more cheese, even ground beef work really well as they tend to join the cheese curds in this slow dance into gravy oblivion. But peppers and onion rings became an appetiser in this case, rather than a topping; something to pick apart and enjoy separately, the sharpness of the peppers and the sweetness of the onions never working with the umami hiding underneath, alongside simply being texturally ambivalent to each other.

This was not a problem, however, as onion rings might well be my Desert Island food; impossibly hard to get wrong, very hard to get right, but simply marvellous everywhere in between.

The poutine was excellent. The faff with the appetisers meant I had missed the first act of the show, so by the time I had dug down deep enough the cheese curds were well on their way to becoming yarn, some even tangling legs with the gravy, the chips at their soggy, flavourful best. It was a tango, rumba and waltz on a plate.

I resolved to spend a few minutes in the city that I had so often avoided on my way back to the airport hotel, criss-crossing between metro stations and the city’s grid-like streets, staying away from the underground city Montreal had built to keep the Montrealaise hidden from the cold.

What I found was a city full of resplendent colonial glory, a statement of both French and British intent to keep out each other, the independence-minded Americans to the south, and, unfortunately, the native and first nation populations all around. This was a “proper” city, not the new and youthful veneer that many North American cities hide behind to explain away many of their faults. This was London on a grid, the Paris of Canada.

I would have to come back.

The poutine was already calling me …