Poutine is back on the menu again this April for Nelson’s fourth annual poutine competition! From April 14 – 27, 2025, 27 Kootenay restaurants are offering their delicious and creative poutines for you and your friends to enjoy (and vote for!)
Similar to Nelson Burger Month and Castlegar Burger Month, we’re going to share our thoughts on the entries that we try and let you know our personal favourites!
If you vote, you’ll receive a $20 voucher to each of the participating restaurants!
Info
Dates: Nelson Star’s 14 Days of Poutine competition is running from Monday, April 14 – Sunday, April 27, 2025!
Price: $15 per poutine
Food Legend: GF – Gluten Free | VT – Vegetarian | VA – Vegetarian Available | V – Vegan
Vote Details
Contestants compete in three categories:
- Best Tasting
- Most Unique
- Best Presentation
Winners are decided by popular vote, so make sure you share your favourites with friends, and don’t forget to vote! You’ll be entered into a draw to win a $20 voucher to all participating restaurants!
You’ll find the voting link on Nelson Star’s Contest page beginning on the 14th here: nelsonstar.com/contests
Menu
Nelson Menu Descriptions
Full Text Descriptions of above menu images
Reviews
We’ve been busy all week trying amazing poutines and boy have there been some fun and creative entries this year!
We’ve tried so many exceptional poutines this week that it’s hard to narrow down the best. Each entry is worth trying, and everyone has their own preferences.
Instead of rating each poutine, here at the Kootenay Current our format it to outline our top picks for each competition. Our Top Six are ranked with our favourite at #1, but following that, each incredible poutine is listed in the order that we tried them!
Kootenay Current’s Top 6 Poutines: 2025
Our picks for the best poutines this year! 🔥
1. Osprey Mountain Grill (Balfour Golf Course)
A fabulous blend of Asian inspired elements creates one of the boldest and most unique flavour profiles we’ve experienced in this year’s competition.
We visited Japan last year, but hadn’t tried Japanese curry before, which makes up the gravy element in this incredible Japanese-fusion dish. While there are certainly some of the ingredients in this sauce you might be familiar with from Indian cuisine, Japanese curry is a milder and sweeter gravy – almost like a stew, but packed with spices and umami flavours.
The toppings are equally impressive, starting with popcorn chicken done with a tempura batter: thinly breaded and crunchy – almost like a sheet of crisp paper wrapping these soft morsels of chicken before they melt in your mouth.
Hit that with a drizzle of decadent eggplant aioli and a good sprinkle of dashii (seaweed, fish flakes) for a salty umami flavour that really comes through here for a very diverse flavour profile that we won’t forget!
We couldn’t stop eating this creative and balanced fusion poutine, and in our opinion is an essential tasting for this year’s poutine competition! We can’t stop thinking about it – it really is that good. 👍
2. Marzano
Cute as a button, this poutine switches out traditional french fries with golden brown cubes of crispy polenta – an Italian dish made of cornmeal, to create one of our favourite entries of the competition!
Crunchy on the outside, but fluffy on the inside just like a potato, this was such a fun spin on a Canadian classic, and our first exposure to polenta too. It’s a fabulous foundation for a poutine, holding up to the sauce: an eggplant ragu. It’s mildly spicy, bright, thick and full of herbs, like its traditional meat-based counterpart.
Topping this, a layer of Mazano’s famous fior de latte – a soft mild cheese that melts into a gooey bed of cheese, balancing out the tangy spicy ragu. Top it off with chili aioli (with Italian chilis right from Calabria!) and a sprinkle of herbs for a fabulous poutine, all served up piping hot in a cast iron skillet. Yum!
3. BRIXX Brewhouse
Brixx knows their place in the Nelson restaurant scene: full out, no-holds-barred food, with a presentation to match. Their “By the Lake Poutine” is huge – maybe even big enough to share (although you might want it all to yourself).
Classic french fries, covered in a bed of jalapeño cheese sauce, as well as squeaky cheese curds, this is a cheese lover’s dream (and we’ve definitely got one of those in the family!).
Add in a generous portion of chipotle pulled pork, fresh red onions, and a dollop of decadent crema fresca, and you’ve got a poutine that’ll put a smile on anyone’s face! (Calorie counters need not apply here😂) Yum!
4. Tandoori Indian Grill & Lounge
Bringing in the rich southern Indian flavours that we love from their curries, Tandoori’s poutine has a bold and creamy cashew curry gravy as its base!
After tasting this dish, we were surprised we’d never thought to pair curry and french fries together before – it’s one of our new favourite fusion dishes. The curry base makes for an outstanding sauce, full of flavour and so decadent you just can’t stop eating it.
The cashew base is our favourite at Tandoori. We usually get the Kashmiri Korma here, which is a cashew based curry chicken dish similar to the sauce used in the Creamy Cashew Gravy Poutine.
The chicken here is another highlight, cooked in a traditional tandoori clay oven over charcoal. This results in a slight char, giving this tender chicken a smoky flavour.
It’s a great combo with the cashew curry sauce, and as fantastic here as a poutine as it is with naan bread and rice. In our humble opinion, Tandoori took the best thing on the menu, and turned it into a fantastic poutine!
5. Taqueria Tiburon (Kaslo)
Getting smokey, salty, and sour notes might be a balancing act, but Taqueria Tiburon walks that line with ease.
The foundation starts strong with hand-cut fries that have undergone some kind of secret treatment, with salty savoury notes right in the French fry base before they’re tossed with the cheese curds in garlic oil. 🧄
The star here is the smoky flavour of the meats, soft brisket, slow cooked in banana leaves until it falls apart on your fork . Tender, smoky meat topped with a birria consommé that stands in for gravy in a fun twist on this a classic Canadian dish.
Adding another strong counter flavour are pickled red onions, delivering distinct sour notes that you’ll find in Tiburon’s tacos. They slice through the richness with a welcome bold tang.
There’s a lot of flavours at play here; this salty, tangy, smoky poutine is one we’d be delighted to order again.
6. Sprout Plant Based Eatery
One of our favourite contenders from this year’s burger month, Sprout continues to impress us with their culinary creativity.
This creation has a few special elements to it that really make it pop. First, instead of french fries, this poutine is made with fried hash browns. Golden brown on the outside and soft on the inside, they’ve got a really cool texture to them that makes this a special experience.
The toppings are also really unique: breaded pineapple, mango salsa, cilantro and pickled onions. We’ve never had fried pineapple before, but it was wonderful; both crunchy and sweet. The mango salsa and pickled onions were fresh and tasty as well, making this a refreshing and different take on poutine.
With their whole menu being vegan, Sprout’s poutine comes served with a vegan queso sauce that’s super creamy, lightly spiced, and had a subtle nutty quality to it.
Fresh, tasty, and crispy, El Poutino Supremo is a unique fruity entry to the competition you shouldn’t miss!
Other Awesome Poutines That We Tried
(Presented in no particular order)
Relish
If you’re looking for a little razzle-dazzle with your poutine, this is the one for you!
This Mexican inspired poutine comes served with a flaming lime shell as it’s served, making it especially enticing in the evening as it’s dusted with a little chili at the table, creating an exciting surge of flames before the forks come out and the tasting begins.
A traditional french fry base is topped with soft birria beef, marinated in chilis and spices before being slow cooked in broth until it’s tender. It’s finished in a rum glaze for a subtle molasses finish.
Served with crispy fried tortilla strips, fresh pico de gallo, and cilantro lime cream, there’s all sorts of flavours going on here, served up in style!
Waypoint (Kaslo Hotel)
A BC dish through and through, this poutine features the beef cheek from the Waypoint’s dinner menu – and opened our eyes to a new favourite beef dish along the way.
We’ll get to the poutine in a second, but I’ve never had a beef dish so soft, so I just want to take a minute to appreciate the effort that went into perfecting this menu highlight. It’s beyond soft – just melting away in your mouth with these decadent flavours and textures. It’s divine. 😇
Part of that can also be attributed to the gravy here. A Quebecois favourite, bordelaise sauce, made with red wine and beef drippings. It’s full of beef flavour, deep and rich. It’s a classic French sauce done to perfection, and served up with a classic french fry for a dish that doesn’t shy away from keeping the flavour DNA of the poutine intact, refining those flavours we love to excellence.
A generous helping of Instagram-worthy cheese pulls and fresh BC mushrooms top off this satisfying beef poutine, best enjoyed on the water view patio in the sunshine!
Ktunaxa Grill (Ainsworth)
Leaning into their indigenous BC menu, the Hunter’s Bounty lives up to the name!
Bringing a grounded, earthy flavour profile to the competition, this poutine brings some really unique ingredients to the table – some of which are foraged locally and crafted right in-house.
Slow cooked elk and venison, marinated for 3 days, are piled high for a generous offering that’ll leave even the hungriest hunter content. Through the marinating and slow cooking process, the meat is juicy and tender, with a consistency not all that different from the pulled beef you may have had elsewhere. If this is your first time with game meat, you’ll be in for a treat!
Complementing this hearty spread are some really creative pairings. There’s a smoked garlic cedar aioli here that cuts through the meat really well to bring a delightful balance to the dish. It’s made with locally harvested cedar needles, dried and ground into a powder that gets added into this aioli for a bright, almost citrusy flavour that also gets sprinkled over the dish.
Together with a generous helping of cheese curds and hand cut fries, and topped with spruce salt, this is a full meaty dish with some really creative local flavours added in.
The Hunter’s Bounty also has an official cocktail pairing. 🥃
It’s a cocktail designed to invoke the flavours of cola, a scotch base mixed with cinnamon syrup and anise bitters, and rimmed with a touch of powdered cedar. It’s a great pairing, complementing the french fries in the poutine with the flavour of cola – a classic combo, and a refreshing palette cleanser from the strong flavours at play in the poutine.
Thank you to each restaurant listed above for providing us with your tasty creations for the purposes of this review.
Yum Son
You’ve got to love it when a restaurant creates a dish that shows off their signature flavours, and that’s exactly what Yum Son has done with the Pho(tine) Twenty.
The sauces in this dish bring the restaurant’s Asian influences to this poutine, with a gravy made from their house special: pho broth!
Cooked for 24h with beef bones, lemongrass, charred ginger, and herbs, this yummy broth has been turned into a one-of-a-kind gravy packed with umami goodness. Together with creamy Laughing Cow cheese, sweet and tangy hoisin, and fresh mint and basil, this poutine brings has a lot going on in this impressive package.
Top these crispy golden fries off with some crisp pickled onions, and you’ve got a great balance of fresh ingredients and warm, cozy goodness that bridges eastern and western cuisines beautifully!
The Royal
We’ve learned a lot about poutine this week, including the different types of traditional poutines (yes, there’s more than one😉).
The Royal is serving up a Galvaude style poutine straight from Montreal, with crispy fried chicken, squeaky cheese curds, and… peas! We’ve never heard of peas in poutine before, but it’s awesome. They add a pop of freshness that really brightens up a poutine – don’t knock it til you try it!
Peas aside, the rest of this poutine is also delicious. The Royal has fried chicken down to a science, with a hearty serving of their signature crunchy nuggets gracing this tasty Quebecois spin on Canada’s national dish.
Note: sprout gets $39 because I did a typo on the form for their photo shoot
Hume Hotel & Spa
This competition, we’re experiencing everything as the base for a gravy, and we couldn’t be more delighted. At The Hume, their gravy is based off their French onion soup: cognac infused caramelized onion reduction cooked down into a sauce that smells absolutely mouth watering.
House cut fries are topped with this delightful concoction and a generous helping of cheese. There’s both traditional squeaky cheese curds here as well as thyme-infused gooey gruyere for a cheese pull we first described as “hilariously stringy”, with a smile on our faces.
This cheese is topped with crispy shallots and bright beet chips for colour and crunch. The total package: a poutine that smells heavenly, with a striking colourful presentation to match!
Finley’s Bar & Grill
A savoury Mediterranean take on poutine, this dish brings an upscale, grown up flavour palette to the competition. Can we get this one with a glass of red wine please? 🍷
This poutine is built on a bed of crispy waffle fries. They’re fun, hold up well to the gravy, and maintain their crunch even with all the other flavours and sauces going on here.
This base is loaded up with muffuletta – a fresh olive salad made with capers, vegetables, and olive oil. It’s a creative addition to the dish that instantly transports you to the mediterranean. It’s sort of like an olive tapenade – chunkier, but still delivering the salty, savoury flavours that make olive tapenade such a great spread. It’s a strong flavour that stands out in this dish, but there’s plenty of other things at play here too!
Marinated chicken, full of zesty citrus and chipotle flavours, brings herbal citrusy freshness to the dish. Unlike the breaded chicken we’ve had this week, this one is served up grilled, making this a lighter option (relatively speaking😉).
Paired with lemon garlic tzatziki and the aforementioned olive notes, this is a creative take on poutine that would be at home in a resort by the seaside, or in the sunshine on the patio!
Sage Wine & Tapas Bar
Good BBQ is all about balance, with sweet, savoury sauce complementing the meat to create a mouthwatering dish that’s become a favourite worldwide.
In the Korean BBQ Poutine, soy, sugar, and sesame meet garlic and ginger to create a recognizably Asian flavour that’s addictive and satisfying.
Thinly sliced bulgogi beef, marinated in these sweet and sour flavours, is seared and served atop a bed of crispy fries and savoury gravy. It’s a unique flavour that’s quite different from American BBQ sauce, with a salty umami element that shines through.
Paired with the spice from kimchi, which itself has a balance of sweet and sour, it’s a combo that works well to capture the essence of Korean BBQ while still building on the cheese curd and gravy base we know and love.
Waits on Nelson
A dessert poutine? Yes please! 😍
After so many tasty savoury dishes, we’re ready for something sweet, and Wait’s has just the thing: delightful curly fries dusted with cinnamon and sugar. It’s a fun creation that has as much in common with a banana split as it does with a poutine.
Topping the fries is an apple compote with notes of ginger, cardamom, lemon zest, and ginger. With those ingredients, this would be amazing on almost anything, and it’s great on curly fries.
Finishing it off are all our favourite banana split toppings: whipped cream, chocolate shavings, caramel sauce, fresh raspberries, and banana chips! Go on… you deserve it! 😋
Kootenay Tamil Kitchen
The spiciest of the entries we’ve tried, but that’s a plus in our books!
Blending Caribbean jerk sauce with spicy Indian chicken and chili-black bean paste, there are a lot of bold flavours at play here, taking your tastebuds on a journey from sea to sea!
This tropical fusion poutine isn’t just spicy though. There’s plenty of tangy sweetness in the jerk sauce that makes for a great complement to the chicken, as well as a pop of veggie goodness with edamame beans, and of course Canadian cheese curds to bring this dish together.
It’s a real fusion of flavours from all around the world, all in one dish!
Sleep Is For Sissies
Our visit to Sleep is for Sissies in Winlaw introduced us to the most extraordinary poutine topping we’ve had yet: a tourtière!
This Quebecois meat pie is packed with ground beef and herbs, wrapped in flaky pie crust that crackles with a satisfying crunch with every forkful. The accompanying deep brown gravy is delicious here – a little thinner than you might imagine, almost more of a sauce than a gravy. Paired with the buttery crunch of the pastry and the melted pools of cheese, this little meat pie really shines!
All of this is served over a mountain of thick cut russet fries and balanced out with a fresh bite of green onions. Generously portioned for even the hungriest in your party, a visit for the Deca-dance Tourtière Poutine is well worth the drive. What a fun poutine experience!
Torchlight Brewing
Taking a historic Italian-American beef sandwich (like the one featured in the hit show The Bear), and turning it into a poutine with exceptional success, Torchlight’s Braiseur D’ours brings big roast beef dinner energy to the poutine scene.
Pairing slow braised beef with horseradish is a sure way to get us in the room. In this case, the horseradish is part of the sauce – drizzled over the dish for a pleasant bite that’s immediately distinguishable, but not too spicy as far as horseradish goes. It’s a classic flavour pairing that goes just perfectly here, and had us searching the bowl for the bites with the most sauce right away.
The beef itself is juicy and tender, reminding us of a Sunday roast beef dinner, especially with the roasted onions right there. It feels like a luxury, a special occasion. Then again, the annual poutine competition IS a special occasion, so why not celebrate it with a treat like this.
The impact of the smoked hickory sticks is also a notable addition here, adding a welcome crunch to the dish for a varied texture that offsets the melted cheese curds and gravy infused tots.
In another nod to the sandwich that inspired this poutine, giardiniera mix (spicy pickled vegetables) have been added to the mix for a pop of crunchy vegetables and a hint of vinegar.
We’ve never had the sandwich version, but judging by poutineafied version, we’d love to try one!
2024 Champions
Winner of “Best Tasting” Poutine
- Chez Serge: The Grand Finale
- Broken Hill: The St. Lawrence
- Desi Donair: Chaps Poutine
Winner of “Most Unique” Poutine
- Chez Serge: The Grand Finale
- Desi Donair: Chaps Poutine
- Beauties: The Pepperonlyfans Poutine
Winner of “Best Presentation”
- Torchlight Brewing Co: El Sabroso
- Chez Serge: The Grand Finale
- Broken Hill: The St. Lawrence
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