A cheesy endeavour: La Poutine Week promotes small businesses and encourages creativity

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This article was published 31/01/2018 (3125 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

There’s a new gravy train rolling into town. And if it hasn’t yet oc-curd to you what we’re talking about, or if all this cheesy wordplay is frying your patience, we won’t stall any longer: La Poutine Week is coming to Winnipeg.

From the creators of the immensely popular Le Burger Week, La Poutine Week follows the same format — it’s a festival during which local restaurants put their signature spin on the French-Canadian classic, which is traditionally comprised of french fries, cheese curds and gravy.

The inaugural edition of the event starts Thursday and runs until Feb. 7, and includes more than 80 Winnipeg restaurants, surpassing any other participating city in Canada.

Offered at a special “poutine price,” attendees are encouraged to try the creations and then vote for their favourites on lapoutineweek.com. At the end of the festival, each city will announce their respective winners in categories such as judge’s choice — for which a panel of expert judges will carefully determine which restaurant’s poutine they were most impressed with — most original poutine and best poutine, voted on by the eating public.

Co-founders Na’eem Adam and Thierry Rassam say Winnipeg has always amazed them with its enthusiasm for events such as Le Burger Week, so it seemed only natural to also include the city for this year’s La Poutine Week, which debuted in Montreal in 2012.

“The local food culture is extremely strong, so we felt, why not bring La Poutine Week into the mix and see the amazing creations our participating restaurants come up with,” stated Adam in a news release about the event.

In a later email to the Free Press, Adam says the pair have high hopes poutine week will be equally as successful as burger week.

“Winnipeg is such a cool city for adapting fun festivals like this with so much energy and openness. It’s all about having fun, and if the chefs, owners and eaters are enjoying their experience — that’s perfect!” he says.

“I wouldn’t say (the buzz is) the same, but it definitely carries the same energy,” he adds, comparing the two festivals.

“When you say ‘burger,’ people light up because they know what to do, what people like and how to present it. When you say ‘poutine’ to someone outside of Quebec, you get a more curious or inquisitive reception where people start to imagine and push their ideas of what a poutine should be.”

The idea of a specialty food week is one that has expanded beyond burgers and poutine — locally, a fried-chicken week just wrapped up and, in a similar vein, the long-running Dine About Winnipeg is also kicking off this week.

But Adam says they welcome adding other events in the mix, and that all of them are essentially working toward the same common goal.

“We’ve been doing this around Canada and beyond for over six years now. We’ve developed a model that encourages local economies, gives back and allows for people to engage highly with each other and the restaurants,” Adam says.

“We’re very happy with what we’ve developed and understood that we need to evolve and think progressively to be relevant as the years come. The best way to do this aggressively is to welcome competition on the playing field.

“Our end goal is to encourage small businesses and help them continue to do what they love doing. If others want to join us in that mission, we’re excited to welcome them. We also encourage people to reach out to us with their ideas so that we can borrow our model to them. The Charcoal Collaborative team in Winnipeg is an example of this and we support them fully,” he adds.

To get you prepped for your potential poutine feast, the Free Press arts department staff will be partaking in a poutine crawl to several different participating restaurants. Check winnipegfreepress.com on Friday, or the print edition on Monday, to read their thoughts on some of the creative creations.

erin.lebar@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @NireRabel