This year was the 10th New Hampshire poutine festival, and the first one we made it to. This year it was held at the Budweiser Biergarten in Merrimack—pretty sure it used to be in Manchester, so I don’t know how often it relocates. The first couple years, I kept hearing about organizational/supply problems, and I’ve been a little festival-averse since we attempted to go to a dumpling festival in Boston (“we’ve just returned from our destination wedding and can’t afford a honeymoon, so … let’s … go to Boston for a four-day weekend and get dumplings?”) only to discover that everyone sold out of dumplings right about when we got there. (We went down the street and got Toscanini’s, and then got the burger at Alden and Harlow that night. All worked out.)
But this was really cool.
There were some organizational issues. You pay for your pass (early entrance or regular) and in return you get food tickets, one for each competing poutine vendor (there were 9, I think). There are also a handful of non-poutine food trucks with beverages, kettle corn, that kind of thing.
The two problems were that no one gave us the food tickets—we’d had three servings of poutine before we knew they existed, and then had to go back to the entrance and find someone, and failing to do so, simply took some from an unattended table—and there is no signage telling you which lines are for poutine vendors (i.e. free) and which are for food trucks (not free). It’s probably the kind of thing that seemed obvious to the organizers before anyone lined up, but once the lines are there and you can’t really see who exactly is at the front of them … you either ask somebody in front of you, or if you’re the somebody who’s just been asked, you have them hold your place in line while you go to the front to look for a sign and then come report back.
Not the end of the world. Just noting! Stuff like that can be more of a nuisance if you’ve got kids or older adults with you, or if the weather was bad. This was brisk but sunny.
The lines moved reasonably quickly. Once it got more crowded, we split up and went to different lines so we could order two types at once. There were a lot of people with big tupperware containers so they could just get poutine from each line and take it home. There were also a non-trivial number of people with extremely wide strollers, which I … note … as … an older but childless man … whose ex had kids, and in my day the strollers were not much bigger than umbrellas and … and so I have a good opportunity to practice compassion and grace. But I have been in phone booths smaller than some of these strollers. Is all I’m saying.
Most of the poutine competitors were from southern NH, but the Maine and Vermont winners were also there, which was cool, and I think another place was from up north somewhere. We didn’t try everyone—it’s just too filling! And since we were walking around holding the little paper boats of poutine most of the time, I couldn’t get photos of most of them.
These two are an interesting sample, though. The top is a pulled pork poutine from Stark Brewing. If this was the only poutine you had this day, you’d be perfectly content with it. It’s tasty, the cheese curds were cheesy, the fries were crisp.
But the bottom is from Hollis House of Pizza (whose very existence is still surreal to me; it used to be Christopher’s when I was a kid, and I went to school with the owner’s sons; we had a field trip to see how they make pizza). They won one of the awards last year, which is actually what motivated us to go this year. This poutine was awesome: fries and curds, yeah, but also carnitas, street corn, and “lime pearls” (Modernist Cuisine type spheres/caviar, you know the deal; not sure if there’s just lime juice in them or not). The pearls really made the difference—after four or five poutines, you’re grateful for that acid.
We had a “dessert poutine” too, with marshmallows and caramel, and it was all right, but for the marshmallows to take the role of the cheese curds, they need to be melty, and these weren’t.
Hollis House wound up winning People’s Choice. Well deserved! Worth pointing out that Hollis House always has one or two poutines on their menu, and if you miss the poutine fest, they keep the leftovers on the menu for a few days. They also currently have an applesauce pizza. They don’t call it that, but come on:
Don’t get me wrong, I’m going to try that sometime this month, but it’s an applesauce pizza, and I don’t know if I’m all right with it.
The winner of the Judge’s Choice is one I don’t have a photo of, but interestingly, it was also Mexican-inflected: birria poutine from Athena’s Cantina (of Maine). Again, acid helped: they had a choice of three hot sauces to put on top. I went with the medium, didn’t catch other details because of the crowd, but it was a green chile thing with a bit of tartness that I think was typical pepper sauce vinegar. But that acid really brings out the flavor, you know?
Thirsty Moose had won in the past, and I wouldn’t have been sad if they’d won this year. Mrs C is holding their poutine here, unaware that I am being a dork and photographing her:
These three really represent exactly what I want to find at a poutine festival: Hollis House and Athena’s were the “untraditional flavors” take, while Thirsty Moose took the traditional brown gravy/fries/cheese curds flavor profile and just really bore down on it. This is a beef bourguignon poutine, and yeah, I did google the spelling of that, because I do Welsh Duolingo, not French. You’ve got a really rich stew/gravy involving oxtail and veal bones and red wine, and then surprisingly small pearl onions (small in a good way, like did they just peel the outer layers? you don’t get a bite that’s just onion and gravy this way, it was a really good move) and mushrooms. If you like poutine, this is the thing you like, just boldface with serifs (serifim, if you’re dorky).
It wasn’t cheap … our early entrance tickets were eighty bucks each, and at the end of the day, you’re paying eighty bucks for French fries. But I was pretty damn full, man. Plus you get a little bag and a … I forget what’s in the bag. I don’t know, a visor or a lanyard or something, probably. Maybe those restaurant coupons the kids sell. You’re not going to care what’s in the bag. It’s nice to have a tangible reminder of the event and all that, but it’s going to sit in the closet for a while by the bookstore-on-vacation tote and the WGBH tote and the work-event tote until it goes in the Goodwill pile. And that’s fine!
We’ll definitely go again next year, and if it’s not raining, I recommend it. Do not be alarmed that the line extends to the end of the parking lot before they even open, it moves quick (it really does, we had our first poutine within ten minutes).
. Spring Onion is one lucky kid.
