Why The Samosa Should Be Montreal’s Next Drunk Food Craze
Photo cred - 謝浩然 (B. Tse)
As this site and many other fine publications have documented extensively, Montreal has no shortage of drunk food. Whether you’re craving fries, pizza, or peanut butter, it’s not hard to find something to satisfy your alcohol-induced hunger.
As good as our fine city’s selection is, there’s one food that could improve its already impressive drunk food game: the samosa.
Anyone who’s spent time around Montreal’s many Indian restaurants, or, for a less authentic experience, at McGill, is likely to be familiar with the samosa. It’s a fairly simple concept: potatoes, peas, or some other filling stuffed inside of a deliciously doughy pastry.
While there’s no shortage of samosas around Montreal, they tend to be served in the light of day, or at least in classier contexts. Although you can find them at certain deps, they tend to be served most frequently at McGill fundraising events and sit-down restaurants.
These settings are certainly enjoyable places for chowing down on samosas, and, if there’s a bad place to eat one, I’ve yet to find it, but most of the places that are serving them are missing out on an incredible opportunity: drunk samosas. I have no doubt that the samosa would be the perfect drunk food for Montrealers, and I have several simple reasons why.
To start with, they’re cheap. Affordability is an essential part of any drunk food’s appeal, and samosas pass this test with flying colours. McGill sales typically charge $1 apiece for them, and places like Chez Guru sell them for even less. Think about it: you could drunkenly drop off a toonie and receive two rib-sticking samosas in exchange. Set up a samosa window on St. Laurent, a la 2 Chow, and you’ll undoubtedly have a line of Montrealers anytime past 1 am on a Thursday-Saturday night looking to stuff themselves with cheap carbs.
Of course, the price wouldn’t matter if the food itself weren’t satisfying, and the samosa fulfills this requirement of the drunk food checklist equally well. It’s greasy, loaded with yummy dough and potatoes, and bursting with flavour in every bite. As good as they taste during soberer moments, they’re the sort of food that definitely improves after a shot or five. Even better, you can hold them in your hand, meaning you could pick one up and continue your mess of a stumble home.
As good as samosas would be as a drunk food on their own, I have an idea to make them even better—a samosa poutine. Here’s how it would function:
Arrange four samosas on a plate in a neat little square. Dump some gravy and cheese curds on top, and you’ve got a delicious samosa poutine. At $1 for a samosa, you could easily charge $5 for the whole dish and deliver the perfect hearty drunk meal.
In a poutine or not, samosas would be the perfect drunk food for Montrealers. They’re cheap, easy to eat on the go, and delicious. It’ll just take the right enterprising store owner to figure it start cashing in on drunk people, and take Montreal's drunk food to the next level.
