Flipside Breakfast Poutine

2024-07-31

Recipe

Ingredients

Prep

Step 1: Hollandaise Sauce

Place egg yolks into a saucepan and whisk until slightly thick, should take about 1 minute. Then, add the lemon juice.

Add 2 tbsp of the chilled butter to the pan and place on low heat. Whisk constantly to incorporate as butter melts, until the bottom of the pan is visible between strokes of the whisk (i.e., it leaves a trace). Remove from the stove.

Slowly add in the remaining chilled butter until incorporated. Then, whisk in the melted butter. Add salt and pepper to taste.

Step 2: Potato

Wash and roughly dice the potato. Rinse under cold water to remove some of the starch. Add some oil or butter to a frying pan on medium heat, and add the potatoes. Cover the pan and step away for around 10 minutes, after which you can return and stir the potatoes around to get an even cook, for an additional 10 minutes or until crisp. Salt and pepper to taste.

Step 3: Egg

You can prepare the egg in any way you want — boiled, fried, etc. I'm going to do it the way I remember Flipside serving it and poach it.

Bring a large pot of water to a boil, then either turn off the heat or reduce it. Crack the egg into a small bowl (don't try cracking an egg over the water directly, it's hard to do). Add 1 tbsp of vinegar to the pot of water, and create a vortex. Gently drop the egg into the swirling water, set a timer for 3 minutes.

Remove from water when done with a slotted spoon (or just any utensil that will help you remove it without breaking the yolk).

Step 4: Assembly

Toss the fried potatoes into a bowl and top with the poached egg. Drizzle as much or as little of the hollandaise sauce from earlier on top, finish with slivers of the scallion. Add salt and pepper to taste.

Epilogue

I was in my first year of college back in 2015, and I'd just moved into first-year housing at Place Vanier. I lived in Hamber House, which was conveniently located right next to the housing commonsblock. Us first years didn't get a kitchen, and so we ate all our meals at the commonsblock food hall.

I was pretty good about having a solid breakfast for the first few weeks of the semester, but as time went by, a solid breakfast turned into a sandwich on the go, which turned into a piece of fruit and maybe a pastry, which eventually turned into maybe a glass of juice or a coffee.

On days when I was ravenous in the morning, I had to find something to eat. I had a friend at the time who I took a bunch of classes together with, and he introduced me to the breakfast poutine at Flipside. My friend was vegetarian — and this breakfast poutine was a perfect meal for him.

The year went by, and soon, my friend and I went our separate ways. Being in different majors made it difficult for us to hang out together as often as we did when we took the same classes. Flipside closed around the start of my second year, and their breakfast poutine disappeared with them.

As far as I know, the space that Flipside occupied in the AMS Nest at UBC was home to a few more restaurants, but all of them were ephemeral in nature, never lasting beyond a year or two. I wonder what students at UBC are eating now, scarfing down whatever they can before running to class. I wonder what their breakfast poutines are.