Poutine Fest!

It was finally time, the climactic 'festival de la poutine' was at hand. We had left the vast majority of the country in shambles behind us. We were ready, even Martin Picard couldn't stop us. It was to be an epic festival of debauchery. A parade of poutine, a gargantuan orgy in a gravy pot, among other things.

It was some of these things.

The festival, we discovered, is actually more a festival for the music than the poutine, though the poutine plays a big part. Martin Picard, from Au pied de Cochon, a restaurant we certainly would have visited were funds allowing, was the guest chef of the year. He created a calamari poutine with squid ink in the gravy, and a lobster poutine for purely luxurious purposes. His restaurant uses more foie gras than any other in the world, and is famous for it's foie gras poutine. He is a large, burly dude and really really really reminds me of Quebec. We pulled him aside and had a brief chat, but he is a celebrity, and was busy, so we didn't have much time with him. Good guy though. His regular poutine won best of the festival for me. The curds were the squeakiest by far that we've had in the province, and though the frites weren't perfect, they were passable. The gravy was good, and all together it made a real mess, which is what it should do. Poutine.....ahhhh. La Banquise was also there, serving up a taco poutine, complete with tomato, guac and sour cream, which was surprisingly quite decent. They had the best altered poutine. The third party was Lemaire, a cheesemaker who's curds are in every store in the area, including Esso gas stations and everything. Never refrigerated. An extremely popular road snack in these parts. Lemaire had wicked awesome fries, but lacked in the gravy department. The curds were good as well, but still not as fresh as Picard's who had clearly done some planning. The festival itself was fun as well. Though headlining the whole fest was 'les trois accords' who frankly sounded like Sum41 in french, similarly whiney and not even rocking as hard, it was the first day's headliners who really kicked ass. 'Les Cowboys Fringants' are fucking amazing, and I highly recommend anybody who likes neo-folk quebecois music to check them out. Not only do they sound good, but their live show is incredible. I was jacked, even throughout the waves of Quebec nationalist sentiment that were liberally sprinkled into the concert. I was as happy about finding out about them as I was about any of the poutines we tried, none of which held a candle to the first one in a true poutinerie. The festival was fun as hell, but not as debauchery laden as I had hoped.

Other cool things about Drummondville are a massive chessboard set up in the square each evening, a confusing amount of well attended bars and lounges, and free parking not far from the festival. All is good.