It’s that time of year again: time to break my efforts at 
maintaining a healthy summer lifestyle for the Calgary Stampede’s crazy foods. This past Friday marked my first vegetarian Stampede and it was definitely quite a challenge to watch my friends eat award-winning BBQ ribs; even walking down the section of the park with all the smokehouses made my mouth water with the rich aroma. However, the urge to *try* to be healthy at the Stampede (what a joke am I right??) took over and… I had a veggie subway for lunch and a corn-on-the-cob. By dinner, I was pretty determined to eat something that I could write up a solid blog post about, so remembering the delicious Red Curry Poutine I had last year, I revisited the Poutine King food truck for some more specialty poutine. Given that my options are significantly limited now, I had to choose from the Garden Poutine or the Fisherman Poutine, which, funnily enough, I both mentioned as want-to-trys from last year. Since I had already spent upwards to $100 to be at the Stampede, I decided to be nice to my wallet and get the Garden Poutine for a modest-for-the-stampede $10.50.
As the picture suggests, the poutine came with a giant glob of sour cream on top with a few pieces of tofu mixed in. While this was jarring and I wondered how that much cold sour cream could ever taste good on steaming hot poutine, I quickly discovered that the trick was to mix it in with the fries really well. While this was difficult given the small container and overflowing veggies, the sour cream was able to combat the saltiness of the gravy for a milder taste, which I personally enjoyed. The veggies in the Garden Poutine included mushrooms, onion, and a ton of green pepper. Though I appreciate the effort to add greens to the dish, the ration of all the veggies and poutine was off and I found myself eating plain poutine and green pepper at the end. I would’ve enjoyed more mushroom and tofu in my poutine for sure. Nonetheless, for the price and quick turnover time of my order, as well as the quality of the poutine itself, I would definitely encourage you to try a poutine from this food truck! Look for them right across from the Big Four building’s east side.
All opinions are my own.