Poutine! La Belle Patate vs. Fritz European Fry House

After craving poutine for the longest of times, I hit up two different poutine-specialty stores (not in the same week).  Oh, and I should probably warn you this post is really heavy on history and chemistry.  It's 2am on a Sunday morning, I really have nothing else better to do than to research poutine.  

La Belle Patate:

The first one that I was more keen on going was La Belle Patate, which serves up traditional poutine!

The menu is pretty simple since they serve just poutines (although there are many variations of them), as well as meat sandwiches, hot dogs, and burgers.  But really, poutine is the main focus, when three out of four boards are just lists of poutines.

Feeling uncreative, I tried out the traditional poutine (small, $6).  Size-wise, it seemed quite small but it was quite filling since it had so much cheese. About the squeaky cheese business, I have heard of this term before, but never experienced this.  I thought it was just some adjective that didn't really mean anything. But INDEED, the cheese here was squeaky! When you chew on it, it squeaks. If you haven't tried squeaky cheese before, you need to try it -- it's so amusing. Another thing I noticed was that the cheese was quite evenly distributed throughout the poutine.


Apparently some people didn't get the same squeaky cheese from La Belle Patate. According to this site about poutine, the fresh curds, eaten plain, right out of the bag on the day it was packed, will indeed squeak when you chomp on them.  The reason is that fresh curds are extremely high humidity: 47% is a usual amount. When you bite through them, they rub against your teeth and squeek while they do so."  I guess I was pretty lucky and got really fresh cheese curds!

The fries, which are double cooked, were good.  Double-frying leads to a crisp outer layer, since a already thick outer layer is fried again.  (Read more about the chemistry here! I feel like such a nerd with this post.) But all science aside, they were definitely crisp and good.

Rather than beef gravy, which is apparently not traditional (that would actually be referred to as "disco fries"), La Belle Patate uses a vegetarian sauce instead.  I liked this sauce, but honestly there was way too much.  At the end, it was kind of drowning in sauce.

More food for thought: velouté is the traditional type of sauce which uses a light stock as a base, whereas gravy uses milk or cream as a base.  

Overall? I had a really good experience at La Belle Patate! I've told friends about the squeaky cheese, and they were quite amused as well and want to try it.  I just hope the next time I go back it will be squeaky! And about the drowning in sauce part, I will ask them to put a bit less next time!

Edit (Feb 24/12): Wow just got home from a really bad visit at La Belle Patate. Not only were the cheese curds not as squeaky (fine, this is actually negligible since I don't expect that all the curds be optimal squeakiness), but the server was so rude. We gave him a $20 and he was supposed to give around $13 back for change. He stuck his hand out to give the ~$3 to us, so we mentioned that we gave him a $20 bill. Instead he just said "TAKE IT" and threw the coins onto the counter and then proceeded to get the $10.  I wouldn't be surprised if he were a bit tipsy, but still. That's no excuse for rudeness.

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Fritz European Fry House:

Wanting to try another specialty poutine shop, I hit up Fritz European Fry House on a late Saturday afternoon before a meeting at Harbour Centre. Apparently, Fritz is super busy at night, after all the kids go clubbing.  

Those shoes matches Fritz's interior design.

It seemed that this tiny place specialized in poutine even more than LBP, since it served only poutine, and nothing else.   The few benches at the walls even had these metal plates with holes in them so you could easily put your cone of poutine in it.

Once again, lil ol' uncreative Janice ordered the traditional poutine (med, $6.50 tax incl).  This medium was actually either about the same or possibly a tad smaller than the small at LBP, I think. Running late for my meeting, I took it to go to eat at the meeting -- so this is definitely an unfair comparison to LBP which I had fresh.  The fries were really kinda meh, and I won't ignore the fact that it was a whole 30 - 45 minutes before I tried them.  They were quite soggy and starchy.

While LBP is infamous for its traditional cheese curds that don't melt, Fritz is known for the exact opposite -- cheese curds that melt in your poutine.  This was good in its own way; I do like my melted cheese, but just thinking about cheese curds squeaking amuses me oh so much.  Fritz was definitely less generous with the cheese.  The sauce was much more flavourful than that of LBP, and I felt that the entire bus could smell it.  This time, the fries weren't drowning, but it was a tad salty by the end of the poutine.

Overall? Fritz was alright, though I really need to try them fresh to be sure the fries aren't that horrible. Since the cheese didn't squeak here and it wasn't even that generous in proportion, I might opt for something less expensive and classy like New York Fries instead.


La Belle Patate
1215 Davie Street
Vancouver, BC V6E
(604) 569-1215


Fritz European Fry House
718 Davie St
Vancouver, BC V6Z
(604) 684-0811