Poutine // Brooklyn Street Local, Detroit MI

Hand-cut french fries topped with cheese curds, caramelized onions, bacon, and thick beef gravy.

The key to great poutine is threefold: fresh hand-cut fries, squeaky cheese curds, and a delicious, glutinous beef gravy that is hot enough to partially melt the cheese curds and thick enough to stay on the fries when you pick them up. The poutine at Brooklyn Street Local has all of these attributes, along with the addition of crispy bacon and caramelized onion.

Being Canadian and a bit of a poutine purist, I was skeptical about the addition of these last two ingredients – why mess with perfection?  But this is a delicious combination.  Let’s face it, adding bacon is rarely a bad idea, and the caramelized onion adds the additional benefit of helping the gravy cling to the fries in clumps (trust me, this is what you want).

Brooklyn Street Local is a small brunch and lunch diner that was opened in Corktown last year by Torontonians Deveri Gifford and Jason Yates. Gifford and Yates were attracted to Detroit for its urban gardening scene and are committed to using local, organic ingredients and whole foods.  It’s a little pricier than your average diner, but the food is fantastic–and you don’t have to add questionable ingredients to the list of what you’ve just ingested (which, after finishing this plate, will already include more fat and calories than you should probably eat in a week!).