Food travel Drummondville serves up the french fry, cheese curd and gravy melange by the thousands

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Jessica Murphy
THE CANADIAN PRESS

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DRUMMONDVILLE, Que. - A foie gras poutine served at a festival in the central Quebec town Drummondville confirms the dish's place in the world of haute cuisine.

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The Canadian Press

A container of french fries and cheese curds gets a customary chicken velouté sauce poured over it at the Le Festival de la Poutine in Drummondville Quebec.

The Canadian Press

Vanessa Roy tops off a container of french fries with a liberal amount of cheese curds as fellow worker Steve Patenaude waits to apply original or Italian meat sauce at Le Festival de la poutine in Drummondville, Que.

The Canadian Press

Hungry festival goers wait in a long queue for a serving of poutine, at the "Le Festival de la poutine" in Drummondville, Que., on Saturday August 30, 2008.

One of the purported birthplaces of Quebec's best-known dish - the french fry, cheese curd and gravy melange - held its first poutine festival last weekend.

Mario Patry was the professional chef in charge of the Festival de la poutine de Drummondville.

"That's mine, that's my creation," he said of the foie gras poutine being sold.

The town of 67,000, about an hour from Montreal, is where restaurateur Jean-Paul Roy of Le Roy Jucep restaurant claims to have invented the dish in 1964. The Quebec towns Warwick and Victoriaville also lay claim to being poutine's birthplace.

Members of Les Trois Accords, a popular Quebec rock group, organized the festival.

Band manager Charles Ouellet said members of the Drummondville-based group had been talking about organizing the festival for years.

"All poutines are great," said Ouellet. "Though certainly I have a hard time paying $18 for a poutine."

The poutine that may have brought the meal into the upper-crust of the food community actually goes for $23.

Au Pied de Cochon, a Montreal restaurant with an international reputation and a cult following, first topped poutine with 100 grams of duck foie gras back in 2002.

It's a long way from the meal's working-class roots, although restaurateurs have been offering variations on the dish for decades.

Le Roy Jucep has 16 different kinds on its menu.

A popular poutine spot in Montreal, La Banquise, has 25.

And there are variations, even with the classic poutine.

Restaurants in the Drummondville region traditionally add a tomato puree to their sauce, increasing its sweetness.

In Montreal, poutine is the commonly made with a dark-brown, chicken-based gravy.

Now, haute cuisine versions of the poutine are setting the standards for how it should taste and are upping the bar.

Sherbrooke resident Mathieu Pelletier, who attended the festival, agreed.

"I think next year they should push the refined side of poutine," he said after trying Patry's foie gras version.

"It's rethinking the classics."

Poutine is one of many low-brow foods given a high-minded treatment, putting it in the company of lobster, okra, and pizza as foods that have been gussied up for the upper classes.

Still, the classic poutine is a perennial favourite.

Of the 1,500 poutines sold at the festival on Friday alone, most were the traditional version.

"The classic will always have a place," Patry said.

"It will always be the ultimate poutine."