Smoke's Poutinerie Spadina — Restaurant in Toronto

We came to Smoke's around midnight after a night at the AGO. The restaurant wasn't busy and my friend and I ordered at wow size veggie deluxe, no cheese curds. We waited ten minutes, the people who arrived after us were served and still we hadn't received our poutine. The cashier apologized and said they accidently put curds on our poutine and were remaking it. Totally cool. But whIle we waited we watched one employee continuously stir stuffing in a pot, another girl pace back and forth and our cashier disappear. When we finally received our poutine another 8 minutes later, we noticed our peas were missing. What was going on here? Is everyone new? the restaurant was dead. When we mentioned we were missing peas and had to wait again while the confused staff hunted down peas. After they NUKED them, we got two sparse spoonfuls of still cold peas, 5 minutes later. We don't have very high expectations for a fast food chain, but was lower than our low expectations. I did not anticipate waiting nearly 20min for...

Smokes has become the go to for poutine for those seeking gobs of cheese at 2am, and it does have some redeeming qualities, but to be totally honest, I don’t find it that good.

The service here is usually pretty solid. I haven’t been too often, but the service is not the issue.

The issue I’d have is a Wow sized poutine with bacon is $23 after tip. It’s just too much. I realize it’s a big poutine, but this has gotten too far from its origins and has become more of a novelty item. The second thing is, while I realize it’s supposed to be like this, after two seconds, the gravy turns the formerly crispy golden potatoes into mush. It’s a container of slop and I’ve never gotten the logic behind making potties crispy and delicious then drowning it in gravy. I also find the taste of the fries to be that if burnt oil. And it seems like they use chopped up curds, which is odd. Overall, not a great poutine.

Again, service and people were nice, but I don’t think I’ll ever go to Smokes again, it just ain’t...

This was my first time in Toronto and in Canada, and my first meal had to be Poutine. I could not wait to eat the real thing. My friend used to work here and highly recommend Smoke's Poutinerie. I am so glad I followed her advise. I had the original poutine with gravy and cheese curds. I could not stop. I had to leave the store or else I would have bought another, even bigger portion. By the way, they have a vegetarian gravy option which I will try later but I just had to have the original first. There are many stores but I went to the one on Spedina. The decoration is good, full of red as is the Canadian flag, and it didn't smell of fried food, which is great considering that the main dish is fried potatoes. The staff was nice and pleasant, they seemed tired, though, but I'm sure it's because they are college students tired from studying and partying. But they helped me make the best decision on what to get. Please come to Florida and open a few stores down here. We have many colleges that...