Poutine doodle: Why Google is celebrating Quebec's beloved dish

Google is celebrating one of Canada’s favourite comfort foods on Friday.

The search engine gave a nod to poutine with a Google Doodle ahead of the long weekend in the country.

A colourful image shows a takeout box full of French fries topped with brown gravy and white cheese curds as well as a blue fork dancing next to it.

“Today’s Doodle celebrates a delicious Québécois dish you’ll surely want to pout-ine your mouth!” Google said.

The search engine picked May 19 as it was the same day the word “poutine” was added to the English Merriam-Webster Dictionary in 2014.

Poutine is a Quebec specialty whose history in the province goes back decades. But over the past decade, it has become more popular outside of Quebec and is now widely served across Canada and in other countries.

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While a traditional poutine includes fried potatoes, gravy and cheese curds, the dish has many variations.

“Within Canada, regional variations include Montréal-style poutine which contains smoked meat, and poutine galvaude prepared with chicken and green peas,” Google said.

“Across the globe, even more types of poutine exist, such as Italian poutine with tomato sauce instead of gravy, and veggie poutine with mushroom sauce.”

Thanks to the doodle, poutine was the top Google search term in Canada, with more than 200,000 searches as of Friday morning.

The National Poutine Day is celebrated on April 11 each year.

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