Oakie's, Huddersfield
My list of worries for when I’ve graduated:
Am I going to get a job?
Am I going to get a job I like?
How am I going to eat Oakie’s?
Am I going to have to live with my parents
again?
Am I going to like where I might be living?
Are Oakie’s going to move to where I might be
living so I can eat there?
With Oakie’s original location in the fusion food hall
temporarily closed whilst they move on to bigger and better things; my poutine
withdrawals are sky high, leaving me feeling like a real life adaptation of a character
from trainspotting on the mend. I was hung over today, I got paid today and I
couldn't go and get a poutine; it’s times like these when I wonder if there
really is a god.
Let’s start with the Huddersfield dining scene, or the lack
of which. It’s like something out of The Walking Dead, barren, desolate and
dangerous. ‘Lets go and get lunch’, ‘OK, where should we go’? Begin the mission
of walking round getting hungrier and hungrier whilst your judgement become
less logical and your desperation becomes more radical. It’s like seeing 30
zombies in a corner and thinking let’s not go in there, 20 minutes later you
see somewhere with 15 zombies and your optimism increases and think you might
be able to walk in there and take them. Then the next thing you know you’re in
a Weatherspoon’s camouflaged under some other name and decor, you’re eating a
microwaved meal that you could have bought from Sainsbury’s and your taste buds
are being violated.
Since last September Oakie's has become a culinary safe house
to me, serving up delicious poutine that’s well above just reliable.
So what is poutine? I don’t expect anyone but the residents
of Huddersfield to know because before Oakie’s I’d never heard of it in my
life. Essentially its chips, cheese, and gravy with some form of meat on top.
There’s various options including chilli beef and hunter’s chicken etc etc but
from my experience the only choice worth choosing is of course pulled pork, the
ultimate way to consume a pig. Upon my first visit I was horrified by the idea
of tainting pulled pork with gravy, mainly due to the fact that I’m a bit of a
pulled pork hipster and I've always come from the school of thought that gravy should
be reserved for roast dinners; but it works tremendously well. I could honestly
talk about how good the food is and start throwing about a load of adjectives
like nobody’s business but there’s really no need. It’s flawless and you need
to try it.
A point needs to be made about the actually quality of the
food. To my knowledge Oakie’s source everything locally which results in each
individual component of their delicacy being of a ridiculously high standard. Yes
it is a pretty heavy snack, it’s hardly rocket with a squirt of lime juice so
you probably wouldn't get away with eating poutine for every meal, every day of
the week. However at least you know that you’re putting something decent into
your body.
I remember one of my friends once saying ‘I don't like
poutine’ and all I could do is look at him like he just tweeted ‘If barraco
barner is our president why is he getting involved in Russia’. A living man
should not physically be able to say the sentence ‘I do not like poutine’ just
like a man isn't able to urinate without getting in on the floor; or maybe
that’s just me? Regardless there’s an underlying manly theme that goes along with
this food, so if you see a female eating here that isn't 70 stone then you
should probably hit on her, chances are she’s a keeper.
The originality of the place really needs to be praised.
Apart from there being a poutine place on Bricklane market in London I’m not
massively aware of anywhere that specializes in it. With this being such an
instantaneously like-able food that can only mean one of two things, everyone is
going to start stealing the idea or Oakie’s are going to secure national
domination; I’m hoping it’ll be the latter.
