A dozen years ago, Montreal’s most famous chef, Normand Laprise, arrived here to launch a restaurant in the Flatiron District. Cena didn’t last long, but it garnered three stars from Ruth Reichl in the Times. Since then, what was once a drip has turned into a flood, as influences and chefs have migrated in increasing numbers from our frosty French-Canadian counterpart 329 miles to the north. Recently, I visited the city to analyze New York’s culinary debt—and see what else may be in store for us.
Currently, poutine is Montreal’s greatest gustatory contribution to NYC, a tangled mass of French fries, brown gravy, and semi-molten cheese curds. This quintessential working-class tuck-in debuted a few years ago in upscale form at The Inn LW12—a gastropub that, through lavish application of maple syrup, tried to be the Canadian Spotted Pig. It failed. Now, poutine is readily available in many Brooklyn and Manhattan neighborhoods, at boîtes as diverse as Sheep Station, Hotel Griffou, Dive Bar, Pommes Frites, Corner Burger, Shopsin’s—the list goes on and on. We’ve even had a restaurant devoted to it, the Lower East Side’s now-defunct T Poutine, which filled its menu with off-the-wall variations such as “treehugger” (mushrooms, vegetarian gravy, and curds).
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