You can’t sleep on all-you-can-eat poutine

I have some good news and some bad news, foodies. There’s a poutine festival and poutine crawl happening on November 19. The bad news is that part of the fest is already sold out. What can I say? I guess you can’t sleep on all-you-can-eat poutine—although after a few bites of the ultrarich gravy- and cheese curd-laden French fries snack, all you’ll want to do is sleep.

Le Festival de la Poutine 2011 takes place at the Hellenic Community Centre (4500 Arbutus Street) starting at noon, and poutine lovers can still enjoy the day portion of the festival (which runs until 5:30 p.m.). Plus, it’s free.

The daytime festival is a family-friendly event with lots of activities for kids, including a battle of the bands contest for teenagers. There will also be plenty of homemade poutine dishes to try out, so show up hungry.

What you will be missing, however, is a four-hour poutine crawl happening around the city (that 30-person activity is sold out). Organizers of Le Festival de la Poutine told the Straight that the crawl will hit up La Belle Patate, Frenchies, Fritz, Dunn’s, the Charles Bar, and Kaboom Box. So you may want to organize your own poutine crawl another time.

The other sold-out event happens back at the Hellenic Centre at night, where 10 amateur cooks will compete in a poutine contest and attendees will get to sample the fruits of their labour.

There’s always next year.

You can follow Michelle da Silva on Twitter at twitter.com/michdas.