Poutine is a scream at Euclid Hall
I scream, you scream, we all scream for poutine—right?
Euclid Hall satisfies Denver’s hungry, potato-loving hordes with a small menu of poutines, from a vegetarian version to a decadent meat-eater’s dream.
All right, so, maybe there aren’t “hordes” of poutine people here in Colorado. For those in the dark: Poutine is a classic Canadian treat, a pile of french fries doused in gravy and cheese curds. Many variations exist, especially in poutine’s home province of Quebec, but the basic idea remains: glorious, fatty, life-giving goodness that maintains stamina over long hours of beer drinking and steels the eater against winter’s brutality.
In essence, poutine is a fairly familiar dish. We Americans have our own takes on it, like gravy fries and cheese fries, but don’t dare suggest to a Canadian that there’s an American equivalent. (You don’t want that kind of heat.) Euclid Hall takes the basic recipe and gives it a couple of gourmet tweaks, as in the roasted-duck style that’s the restaurant’s simplest form of poutine.
The roasted-duck poutine is served in a pan, sauced with a peppery duck gravy, and loaded with bite-sized chunks of duck meat. It’s best to pick at the heap with a fork, spearing the morsels of meat together with gravy-drenched fries. The duck flavor is strong—pleasantly musty, mysterious, and rich. To someone accustomed to cheaper birds, duck just tastes more interesting.
Then there’s the glue that holds it all together: Wisconsin cheddar curds. The cheese is thick in Euclid Hall’s poutine, fastening the fries into bundles and adding a note of mouthwatering tanginess to the proceedings. Poutine purists would bristle at the way Euclid’s curds melted into the fries. Ideally, they’d remain discrete lumps of cheese-concentrate. Perhaps they just got left in the oven too long, or that’s simply the way Euclid does their poutine. Whatever. It tastes good.
A special treasure hides beneath the mass of potatoes—melted cheese that’s crustified to the bottom of the pan. It’s an added bonus to the possibly inauthentic gooey-cheese poutine, crispy at the edges and easily scraped from the pan. Some of the blobs are even a little browned or burnt. What’s that? Oh, yes, that’s the heartbreaking sound of tortured Canadian poutine lovers and heavenly angels singing in unison.
The $12 roasted-duck poutine is the baseline. From there, diners can go in either direction. A mushroom-gravy-topped vegetarian poutine is $9; the “Duck, Duck, Goose” poutine adds a sunny-side-up duck egg and an ounce of foie gras (holy shit) to the duck poutine for an additional $10.50. At $14.50, there’s also lamb poutine, with goat cheese and sorrel, for the discerning baby-animal consumer.
Really, there’s no going wrong with the poutine at Euclid Hall, melted cheese curds or no. Just remember to hoist a beer with it, eh?
