“If this is what Canadian food is like, I don’t think I ever want to visit that country!”
Such was my summary to my dining companions (Alf, Mum and Dad) after our meal at The Maple Leaf, a sports bar in Covent Garden. The Canada-themed pub is part of the Greene King chain, so I don’t think it’s entirely fair to slag off the entire country’s cuisine based on this central-London establishment. That being said, the only meal Canada is famous for is poutine, a recipe so basic I can’t believe the Maple Leaf could have somehow got the recipe wrong and therefore be unfairly representing the dish.
So this is what a poutine involves: lukewarm oven chips doused in salty brown gravy, with weird squeaky cheese crumbled on top. On the menu, it calls this a Canadian tradition. Stick to ice hockey, politeness and welcoming a refugee policy, eh?
The pub’s management are obviously aware that poutine is immensely boring, so they’ve tried to introduce some variations (that’s right, variations on chips, cheese and gravy). There’s a meat poutine. A BBQ burnt ends poutine. A ‘British’ poutine, and the unappetisingly titled ‘hogtown’ poutine (I wouldn’t feed this garbage to swine!). But to coin a phrase, you can’t polish a poutine, and the variation we ended up choosing (BBQ burnt ends) was equally gross.
For dessert, we ordered something called Sweet Bacon Waffle. I quite like the idea of saltiness with sweet things – salted caramel ice cream, for instance – but this just tasted weird. The porky flavour of the bacon cutting through into the ice cream was quite an odd combo.
Add on top of this were some fairly ludicrous beer prices (a 330ml bottle of Canadian beer for £7.75) and I don’t think I’ll be making my way back to the Maple Leaf any time soon. There were some plusses though – the waitress and door staff were nice, and the place did have a buzzy, sports bar atmosphere.
After our disappointing poutine, we did the sensible thing and ordered a Mexican nachos sharer off the Maple Leaf’s menu. If you ever fancy eating North American food, I suggest you do the same and choose somewhere from Mexico or the USA instead.
Score: 3/10
Location: 41 Maiden Ln, London WC2E 7LJ
The A to Z of World Food in London 