Breakfast When You Are Moderately Hungover and Heading South
Breakfast When You Are Moderately Hungover and Heading South
Frites in San-Sébastien
Last October, a highway bypass in Québec called Autoroute 35 finally opened, connecting Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu to Route 133 in San-Sébastien. The 15-mile stretch shaves about 10 minutes off the trip between Montreal and the U.S./Canada border, but it also means that drivers turn off Route 133 about a mile before the steaming tins of poutine and sacks of frites served at Chez Ti-Polo.
Aside from the cornfields and silos, you’ll pass mostly small homes and nondescript shops and restaurants along Route 133. There’s Chez Pepe (cuisine Canadienne et Italienne), a house with horse statues on the porch and a teepee in the yard, and a shack selling crystals just before the border that appears like it’s been closed for years but always has an OPEN sign in the window.
Chez Ti-Polo looks like a ranch house converted into a restaurant, with picnic tables out back where you can eat a plate of poutine and stare off into the fields. A cross between a diner and a casse-croûte, a snack stand that serves fried food to go, it sells the standard diner breakfast and greasy lunch.
Poutine, that beautiful mess of fries, gravy, and cheese curds, is Quebec’s de facto provincial dish. The hot dog, served as the traditional steamé in a pillowy white bun, or the somewhat less traditional buttered and griddled toasté, is a runner-up. Neither are traditional breakfasts in the sense that you’d grab it to go before heading into the office, but for the morning after a late night and while on the road they can offer a certain standard of comfort as the first meal of the day.
On a late Tuesday morning when I am moderately hungover and heading south, I take the roughly one mile detour to stop at Chez Ti-Polo for a toasté, all-dressed with mustard, chopped onions and coleslaw, a side of frites and a coffee. It is hot, cheap, and quick, and I eat it sitting alone at the counter, watching the diner matron bustle around the floor and greet the regulars. I ask how long they’ve been open (37 years) and tell her how my family used to stop here on road trips to Montreal (“Ah, ouai?” she says while spooning the soup du jour into a bowl in the crook of her arm).
It is the perfect traveler’s breakfast of nostalgia and comfort, grease and substance. I don’t really want to leave, and am in no particular rush, but have no reason to stay either. After paying, I step outside into the cooler, quiet air. Behind the diner, a cat stalks the field and the cars to the left keep on rumbling by.