There can be no doubt that I am a man who loves his poutine. In a lot of senses I am a purist, but when a place gets the right kind of creative I can get behind it. The Kroft in Tustin, Orange County started lighting up my social media feed months ago with some beautiful food pics. It took a while to find an excuse to get down there, but when I did I couldn’t help but make a stop.

It took a lot of chatting with the woman behind the counter, but I finally decided on the Country Fried Chicken Poutine. It came with country gravy as opposed to the usual thin beef gravy, chicken nuggets, bacon, cheese curds (because without that you can’t call it poutine) and a little bit of green onion. Oh, and of course a base of fries.

I had never had such a poutine before, but wow this was good. There was plenty of cheese and the chicken nuggets were really fried boneless chicken as opposed to the kind you might find at a fast food spot. The country gravy was really tasty, but the one thing it was lacking was the ability to add enough lubrication to the poutine. Thus, I had to occasionally grab some water to help continue moving the food down the gullet. Regardless, the poutine was packed with delicious flavor and a great balance of all of the flavors.

The only trouble was that I was alone. Had I been with others, I would have loved to try so many more things. As it was, I was stuck with just one (albeit delicious) poutine. Fortunately, there’s another location in LA that I can get to much easier should the need for creative poutine like this again.

Sometimes life beats the crap out of you. Other times, it gives you exactly what you want. So when what I wanted was some good new food in Pasadena, Spudds suddenly appeared and fulfilled the latter. You see, Spudds specializes in poutine and I am a man who loves his fries with gravy and cheese curds. Plus, as far as I know, Spudds is the only original (unlike Smoke’s Poutinerie in Hollywood, which as you probably know from reading up here has a number of outposts in Canada) poutine spot in all of the LA area. 

But Spudds is about more than just poutine, serving up real American food like burgers and hot dogs as well. I decided to get the Earlybird, which comes topped with cheese (American or Swiss), a fried egg and bacon, plus a choice of bun. Also, veggies, which I passed on. Then I went against my usual rule with poutine of getting it straight up and ordered the Sausage Fest instead. This was normal poutine, but topped with slices of beef, Polish and Cajun sausages.

Both of these were great choices. I ate my Earlybird with American cheese and a pretzel bun and couldn’t have been happier with this fast food-style burger. It’s not going to win any gourmet competitions, but it definitely hit the spot and supposedly the beef is never frozen, which is typically a good thing. Actually, if I could change anything I would have made the egg runnier, but again this has to be thought of in the fast food vein.

The poutine was definitely better than I expected. The fries were crispy, the cheese was curdy and the gravy wasn’t overly salty, which can often be a problem with poutine. On top of all that, the sausages actually enhanced the mix of flavors instead of distracting from them. It also avoided a common poutine issue of lack of gravy leading to dry fries. All of this made me a happy man.

In fact, my biggest disappointment was that this was simply too much food for one man. I couldn’t handle all that good stuff, but I know that I will be back and bring a friend to share in the joy of American and Canadian food.

After a few drinks, our tour guide (aka the girlfriend’s bro) took us to a little hole in the wall called Pommes Frites. Here, they specialized in cones of Belgian fries served with some crazy sauces like Pomegranate Teriyaki Mayo, Irish Curry and more. These seemed all good and well, but I saw something on the menu that tickled my fancy even more: Poutine.

For the uninitiated and un-Canadian, poutine (pronounced pooh-teen) is a gloriously unvegan treat consisting of fries topped with cheese curds and gravy. This combination creates something spectacular, yet rarely found south of the Great White North. It had been a long time since I was in Canada and I was with a couple poutine virgins, so we ordered a large one to split for six bucks.

I watched as the cook scooped up some fries, grabbed some curds and ladled the gravy into a styrofoam cup. I had never seen poutine dished out in a styrofoam cup like this, but I reserved my judgment for the taste. We grabbed our forks and went at it. It was actually surprisingly good for not being in Canada. The fries maintained a level of crispiness in all that gravy and the cheese curds made it halfway into that semi-gooey state that makes poutine so good. The gravy happened to be of the chicken sort and was nice and flavorful and definitely went well with those fries.

Poutine at Pommes Frites was definitely an unexpected treat for my trip to New York. Although not perfect, they definitely did poutine justice and the place could definitely be a little taste of home for any homesick Canadians hanging out in Manhattan.