McDonald's dropped a new breakfast item this week that's either bold or questionable, depending on who you ask: the Breakfast Poutine.
The limited-time dish is only available in Quebec and parts of Atlantic Canada, which means McDonald's decided to launch a reimagined poutine in the one place where people actually know what real poutine is supposed to taste like. Talk about confidence.
For anyone who needs a reminder, authentic poutine has exactly three ingredients: fries, gravy, and cheese curds. That's about it.
McDonald's version, meanwhile, consists of crispy potato bites, scrambled eggs mixed with tomatoes, green chillies, onions, and sausage, hollandaise-style sauce, and cheese curds. Notice what's missing? The gravy. The fries. The core components that make poutine, well, poutine.
McDonald's new breakfast poutine. McDonald's Canada
Look, I'm not a McDonald's burger guy, but I've always had a soft spot for their breakfast. An Egg McMuffin hits different at 7 a.m. And when I ranked five fast-food poutines last spring, I actually gave McDonald's regular poutine a decent score.
So when I heard about the Breakfast Poutine, I figured I'd give it a fair shot. Maybe this morning mashup would work. I grabbed one at my local drive-thru this morning and put it to the test.
Here's how it stacks up.
The price
A regular McDonald's poutine costs $6.99 before tax (add $3.50 for large). That's pretty reasonable for what you get.
The Breakfast Poutine, on the other hand, rings in at $7.99 and only comes in one size. It's not a huge markup, especially considering there's meat and eggs involved.
Portion-wise, it's decent. You get a solid amount of potatoes and a generous helping of the egg-and-sausage mixture on top. You won't be stuffed after eating it, but you could do worse for eight bucks.
The taste
So how does it actually taste? In a word: weird.
It's not bad, exactly. But if someone handed this to me without telling me what it was, "poutine" would be the last thing I'd guess.
The problem is McDonald's clearly just repurposed ingredients they already had on hand. The crispy potato bites? Those are just miniature hash browns. The egg-and-sausage mixture with tomatoes, peppers, and onions is literally the filling from their breakfast burrito.
The hot hollandaise-style sauce is the only 'new' addition, but it lacked any spice whatsoever.
And the cheese curds — the one poutine ingredient in the dish — feel completely out of place with everything else.
Essentially, it tastes like someone dropped a hash brown, a breakfast burrito, and a side of cheese curds into your bag, and you just mixed them all together out of curiosity. That said, it's not bad and would work in a pinch after a rough night.
Is it poutine?
I'm not really interested in eating French fries with gravy as a morning meal, but calling this a poutine is like calling a hot dog a sandwich. Technically, you could make the argument, but you're going to upset a lot of people in the process.
As mentioned earlier, poutine needs three things: fries, gravy, and cheese curds. McDonald's Breakfast Poutine has one of those three ingredients. That's a 33% poutine success rate, which would be a failing grade in any Quebec casse-croûte.
What McDonald's has created here is a breakfast hash. And as a fast-food breakfast hash, it's perfectly fine. It's warm, it's filling, it's got all the standard breakfast components you'd expect from Mickey D's morning menu. But slapping the word "poutine" on it — especially in Quebec, where people take it seriously — feels like a marketing gimmick more than an actual culinary innovation.
Would I eat it again? Maybe if I were desperate for breakfast and already in a McDonald's drive-thru. Would I go out of my way for it? Probably not.
If you're curious to try it for yourself, the Breakfast Poutine is available at participating McDonald's locations in Quebec and Atlantic Canada, from 4 a.m. to 11 a.m. daily.
