Land of the fry, home of the grease

David Sherman

In the land of La Belle Province, language rancour is as eternal as $300 dinners and gifted wine cellars. But, there is an alternate cuisine where language is never an issue and asking for a wine list will get you a good 2026 laugh.

The 125 frozen-in-time La Belle Province diners are called La Belle Province for a reason. It is the home and celebration of the country’s best junk food.

No better proof than the menu glowing on the walls, with pictures, prices and names like Hamburger Trio or Sousmarin, and, of course, a shining, elongated poutine menu.

To the uninitiated, poutine is fresh cheese curds, French fries, thick gravy and anything else in the kitchen, except the sink.

Yet, though personal experience is limited to a few of these Arborite salutes to a time that was, no matter which très belles La Belle Province you beautify, the fries are crisp and brown and taste like potatoes. If you’re avant garde, you get a small paper cup of gravy to dip them in. I don’t know what is in the gravy, but I know what’s not in it — nutrition. But it gooses the dopamine.

These tributes to the fine art of fast food were founded in the ‘60s on the concept of hot dogs, subs and poutine. Now you can also feast on Pogos (corn dogs) and club sandwiches on traditional packaged white bread-like substances and smoked meat (It was founded in Montreal.) It’s cheap, fast and, a quaint concept, made to order.

Décor is 50s-style-diner. Hard surfaces, hard booths, soft food. You don’t need teeth to eat here.

The hamburger, like everything else, is made only after the man or woman at the cash calls for it through the mic as she takes your cash or card. In between she or he might be loading raw cut potatoes into their first oil bath. At La Belle Province, employees never stop dancing.

You order a burger and a ball of fresh ground is dropped on the grill and mercilessly squeezed flat, a diner tradition. Customers are slightly more coddled than the poor cow they eat. But only slightly. You stand and lean against the counter and wait and watch while it’s fried to purgatory. In front of you and behind you -- joined in salivation -- are everyone else who ordered before and after. Rich or poor, discomfort is shared.

A study in the dance of cool efficiency, on the other side of the counter are four or five pirouetting employees churning out Québec’s imperious steamés and every other sort of true blue-collar cuisine. The only steak here is hamburger, overcooked before your eyes, crispy at the edges, and fried beef slivers for submarines and poutine, the former often lubricated with fried pepperoni slices.

This is not hand-rubbed Kobe beef, but it seems to work on a steak sub with chopped iceberg lettuce – nutrition-wise right up there with the poutine gravy and the oil-saturated fried onions -- and a few tomato slices, doused in orange French “salad dressing.”

This allows us to entertain the possibility we’re consuming a vitamin.

The grill chef’s baton is an oversized spatula. Sliding and chopping and squeezing meat and onions and bacon or pepperoni and mushrooms into a symphony of salt and fat to be poured into a white bun then buried under ersatz salad and orange glop. Next stop, a serve yourself all-you-want soft drink dispenser with unlimited ice. Pure heaven.

For maybe $25 for two, give or take, they hit all the brain’s pleasure spots with the magical combo of fat, sugar and salt, and leave you enough cash or credit to eat again tomorrow.

Because not only is this food junk in the best sense of the word, it’s also affordable. Unlike the chains, here the food and food-like substances are hot, fresh and served with a smile that usually says, “You’re going to enjoy this.”

Of course, sometimes it says, “My feet are killing me. I can’t wait to get out of here.”

The La Belles are bereft of acne-scarred, miserable teenagers serving cold, over cooked food-like substances at the fast-food giants that clutter North American crossroads.

You want extra pickles on your burger, fine. Extra mushrooms in your sub, fried or raw? No problem. You get a smile and exactly what you ordered. Extraordinary concept.

The men and women in the La Belle Province ballet, dressed in black and white, slinging fries in overflowing oil-stained paper bags, crushing your burger or spooning chopped cabbage onto your steamé, seem to enjoy their work.

Maybe, like most newspaper and restaurant people, they’re adrenaline junkies. With an extra addiction to the scent of fried meat.

La Belle Province is a parody of itself, its motif is 1950s’ diner. Decor red, white and gaudy. It’s an enjoy-your-food-but-don’t-linger kind of place. The customers are on an assembly line almost as much as the dancers on the other side of the counter, backed by steamers, fryers, a grill and a few feet of workspace.

It’s a systems engineer’s pet. No wasted movement. They may even have found a way to recycle employee’s sweat. Everyone in motion and somehow, by the time you’ve moved along the line from cash to grill at the end of the line, glowing soft drink machine calling, your food is just about ready. It’s fry, steam, grill and shovel it across the counter. Done with a friendly elegance. No pretension, just a we’re all in this together vibe.

Of course, there are better burgers at gourmet prices. Soft banquettes and a myriad of TV screens beaming the sport of the night to distract you from the reality of paying $80 for a couple of burgers and drinks. Bring a couple of kids and you’re dropping a hundred and a half or more for burgers and fries.

At La Belle, the bill is also belle. Maybe $50 to feed the family and people are too busy shoveling down poutine to care if your kid starts to scream or you’re dressed for a construction site and packets of mustard and ketchup are unlimited.

Like Quebec itself, it’s beautifully unctuous.