Smokes Poutinerie: bringing a Quebec classic to the world

One of the many Smokes Poutinerie in Toronto, located at 218 Adelaide Street West

Fries, cheese curds and gravy, the hallmark of any good Canadian stereotype. You can just picture it, us burly lumberjacks riding our snowmobiles across the frozen tundra towards our cities of hockey and poutine. But we all know deep down this stuff just isn't true. It’s not like Canadians have restaurants that exclusively sell poutine…Oh wait.

Smokes Poutinerie has quickly become one of our most popular locations to eat in downtown Toronto. With over forty-five locations all across Canada, Smokes has taken on a life of its own during its quick assent to greatness. 

Ryan Smoklin, CEO and founder of Smokes Poutinerie takes great pride in what he does, and works everyday towards his goal of one day reaching ‘poutine domination’ as he calls it.

Ryan might have started the company, but he attributes his success within the poutine industry to none other than the face featured in and on every Smoke’s Poutinerie door; Smoke. 

This is one iconic face that quickly took on a life of his own after the first restaurant opened in 2011.

‘Smoke is the man, he is the brains. He is the spiritual leader, that’s why his name is on the buildings. He is not a character. He feeds me all the ideas nightly”.

                             

The true face of Smoke’s Poutinerie, Smoke might be stuck in the 80’s but he makes some great poutine.

At three years old, Smoke’s is a very new player into the fast food community and has been met with a wide degree of competition from other companies trying to catch onto the trend of fries and gravy. 

“I’m loving it. They are spending tens of millions to make a mainstream product out of a company I own. It’s cool to see knock offs happen and the big boys chasing”.

With a menu featuring twenty-eight different types of poutine including the chicken bacon ranch featured below, Smokes is a perfect example of taking the phrase ‘why improve on a good thing’ and giving it a good shake.

Stop it, we can hear you drooling

International poutine lovers are in luck as well, as Smoke’s as already started expanding out of Canada. 

“We’re just about to open our first location off the sunset strip in Hollywood. Australia and the UK are next on the hit list, we’re in full steam baby!”

One question that just had to be asked was how many potatoes Smokes Poutinerie went through. As it turns out, the answer was A LOT. 

“We go through about 4 million pounds of potatoes per year, that’s about 80,000 per location. We plant our own potatoes in PEI, we actually have our own field”.

The many faces of Smoke, a true Canadian at heart

In summary, if you’re not allergic to French fries and you have a heartbeat, you should really give Smokes Poutinerie a shot. It is well worth the visit. 

Blog edit: after publishing this post, we found a slightly strange chart; according to StatsCan, potato production has heavily decreased since 2003, but the value of those farms has gone way up. Potato farmers? Whatever you're doing to convince us of your worth ... it's working. Strangely.