Every Chip Stand is a project to illustrate every chip truck in Ontario.

December 3, 2023 6:03 AM

"The chip stand differentiates us from our American neighbours. It is not a food truck. It is not a diner. The very nature of the chip stand is defined by it being a combination of both." Every Chip Stand, by illustrators Chantal Bennett, is an attempt to illustrate every chip stand in Ontario and some neighbouring provinces, "thus chronicling the visual history of these structures that are slowly being replaced by professional food trailers and trucks."
posted by Shepherd (52 comments total)

Those are nice but they mostly look like food trucks to me. We have something that looks like each of them, at least architecturally, around here. I can’t pick out anything that distinguishes them.

Sadly nobody’s doing poutine right now. I couldn’t eat enough to keep the last one afloat all by myself.
posted by The Monster at the End of this Thread at 6:25 AM on December 3, 2023 [3 favorites]

I did not realize/think that Chip trucks were uniquely Canadian. But perhaps as an Ontarian, I'm ignorant of what the rest of you folk serve in your mobile food options.

Regardless, these are very nice images. The Lokal in Rosedale, Ontario, is our Poutinary of choice.
posted by dogbusonline at 6:35 AM on December 3, 2023 [3 favorites]

Poutine is uniquely Canadian (though is starting to spread), and you won’t find fries called chips in the US, but both the mobile and fixed food stand formats pictured in the link are definitely widespread around the US. But yeah, they are good drawings.
posted by eviemath at 6:50 AM on December 3, 2023 [2 favorites]

(Minus the poutine, you can find food trucks and fixed food stands of the sort pictured that focus on fries and similar foods, so there’s overlap in the cuisine too, except for poutine. Meant to be more clear about that in my first comment.)
posted by eviemath at 6:52 AM on December 3, 2023

This is so darling. These are indeed the anchor of rural highway Canada, au Québec et ailleurs. I gotta check out Séguin Patate sometime!

But the magic isn't in the food truck, it's in the supply chain as always. You can't make a poutine without cheese curds and cheese doesn't stay curds if it's refrigerated. So the true poutine truck can't stray far from the fromagerie.
posted by anthill at 7:00 AM on December 3, 2023 [8 favorites]

Those are nice but they mostly look like food trucks to me. We have something that looks like each of them, at least architecturally, around here. I can’t pick out anything that distinguishes them.


Well, they are technically food trucks, what makes them unique to Ontario and sometimes other provinces is that they uniformly the same in that they serve everything fired, nothing bougie like what Americans think of as food trucks in major cities. You will find them at every remote roadside, off highway exits, parking lots. They are a must for another uniquely Canadian activity: going to the cottage, or going camping. They don't go off-piste with their menus because you want that greasy good stuff. People have very strong opinions about which ones suck, which ones are great. And food trucks travel in the US culture, or can be moved when needed. These suckers stay where they are. You pass by closed for the winter chip trucks all the time.

When Americans say food trucks, I do not picture these. I picture what lines the streets of cities like DC where you can get a variety of other kinds of food. A food truck and a chip truck are very different things to me. We don't really have the other kinds of food trucks up here because of legislation. Sometimes cities will let other kinds of food trucks exist, but it's just not as much of a thing where we are here.

So no. You don't have these exactly in the US. Maybe regionally, most likely closer to the border, but a chip truck is its own thing. Much like the Quebec casse-croute.
posted by Kitteh at 7:08 AM on December 3, 2023 [10 favorites]

The US has a lot of roadside snack stands that sell fried food - walk-up window service, look about like the ones in the drawings, sometimes housed in broken down/permanently parked busses though the shed style is much more common. Arguably that mode started in the US last century, with the post-war investments in national highway infrastructure and popularity of family road trips once automobiles and vacations became affordable middle class standards. (Diners also flourished during this time, but grew from an earlier format, that was also more urban to the best of my knowledge. For a couple decades, the drive-in restaurant, that split the difference between walk-up window service food stand and diner, was quite popular, and many of those have morphed into the walk-up window service variety of food stand in modern times when they didn’t have (sufficient) internal seating.) There are regional variations in architectural style on the food stand theme in the US - places in the South look more like Southern shacks, places in the Northeast look more like Northeastern shacks, places in the Southwest look more like Southwestern shacks, etc. So that may appear to be a difference with Canada, where food stands look more like Canadian shacks. But the essential features carry over.

US food trucks vary in cuisine, but the ones in more rural areas are definitely not the bougie sort. (They seem to tend to be either really bad hamburgers and ice cream or really good yet amazingly cheap Mexican food, though.) Source: I have driven through all 48 continental US states, many on multiple occasions.
posted by eviemath at 7:40 AM on December 3, 2023 [4 favorites]

While hamburgers, fries, and ice cream are ubiquitous, there is a lot of regional variation in other cuisine among the non-bougie food stands, though. You’re not really going to find a (non-bougie) poutinerie outside of Canada, crab stand outside of Gulf Coast region or Maryland, BBQ/ribs outside of the South and Illinois, etc.
posted by eviemath at 7:56 AM on December 3, 2023

My point. I am from the land of BBQ shacks but I don't assume everywhere has them. Some places really do have their own culture, and Ontario is one of them. Not everywhere is Americanized or is assumed to have American influences.
posted by Kitteh at 7:58 AM on December 3, 2023 [5 favorites]

But the role of “place in between diner and food truck” is filled with something, and includes exemplars that serve fried foods and specifically fries, everywhere around the US. If the claim had been that chip stands were defined at least in part by their poutine offerings, the claim to Canadian uniqueness would have been valid. But instead the claim is that “the very nature of a chip stand is defined by it being a combination of both [diner and food truck]”. This is absolutely not a unique format to Canada, and likely is an import to Canada from the US.
posted by eviemath at 8:03 AM on December 3, 2023 [2 favorites]

This is absolutely not a unique format to Canada, and likely is an import to Canada from the US.

Citation please.

I am from the US and decently well traveled up and down the East Coast, and I have seen clam shacks, crab shacks, BBQ shacks, sometimes even the classic train car diner, but I haven't seen shacks that just sell fries/burgers/fried mushrooms alongside the rural roads in the same mode. Maybe I'm just not looking but I suspect they are not as strongly as visible as the ones up here.
posted by Kitteh at 8:10 AM on December 3, 2023 [1 favorite]

Eg. aside from offering poutine, the versions of this where I live in Canada absolutely have analogues that I’ve seen in multiple different regions of the US.

(And the entry on their list nearest me is just a straight up food truck, always has been, is your standard sort of food truck you’d find in many US college towns, and started up in the wave of food trucks being the popular new thing in food just a little before the pandemic, which was indeed imported from the US (though I’m pretty sure that food trucks were imported to the US from elsewhere) quite explicitly by our local foodie and restaurateur community, which I have friends in who have directly talked about that - like “I went to X place in the US and they had these food trucks and I think we should do that here”.)
posted by eviemath at 8:11 AM on December 3, 2023

(In my region there are also a couple food trucks that label themselves chip wagons and explicitly refer to UK precedents, too.)
posted by eviemath at 8:13 AM on December 3, 2023 [1 favorite]

I think you can probably draw a line between these and the chip shops of the UK, though I don't know enough about this Canadian variation (and haven't really paid enough attention to chip shops - they're a background element that's very much taken for granted) to make the case.
posted by entity447b at 8:13 AM on December 3, 2023

You’ve never seen a hamburger/ice cream stand in the US that’s just a walk-up window?! They’re ubiquitous around and in private campgrounds and the more outdoorsy or middle class touristy areas where private campgrounds tend to cluster.
posted by eviemath at 8:16 AM on December 3, 2023 [1 favorite]

Citation: pick any state and search for “ice cream stand [state] or “hamburger stand [state]” on your favorite mapping app.
posted by eviemath at 8:19 AM on December 3, 2023 [1 favorite]

Trans-Canada Fryway: "Four friends navigate ten provinces in an attempt to document every chip stand along the Trans-Canada Highway."
posted by pracowity at 8:21 AM on December 3, 2023 [5 favorites]

You’ve never seen a hamburger/ice cream stand in the US that’s just a walk-up window?! They’re ubiquitous around and in private campgrounds and the more outdoorsy or middle class touristy areas where private campgrounds tend to cluster.

There is at least one, probably more like two or three, in nearly every small town in the Midwest as well. And larger cities; I can think of three off the top of my head in and around Cincinnati, OH.
posted by cooker girl at 8:23 AM on December 3, 2023 [2 favorites]

What this does very much remind me of, moreso than anything in the US (where, yes, these things can exist, but are rare, in my experience, and often seem to survive as seasonal ice cream stands) is the German Imbiss. I used to watch the soap Alles Was Zählt and the Imbiss featured prominently as a place to have exposition conversations. (Does it still? Is Alles Was Zählt even still in? It was about figure skating when I was watching it.)
posted by hoyland at 8:23 AM on December 3, 2023

Not to interrupt this surprisingly fighty thread about the creators' claim that chip trucks are an Ontario thing, but when I created it there was a paste error and I inadvertently dropped "and Joel Kimmel" after the name Chantal Bennett above. Not that they'll see this, but apologies if so.
posted by Shepherd at 8:30 AM on December 3, 2023 [2 favorites]

My guess is that chip stands, as opposed to roadside food stands in general, are distinctly Canadian, reflecting the relatively-close relationship between Canada and the UK. There are definitely greasy roadside food stands in the US, but I would be surprised if they branded themselves as chip or french fry stands, because fries aren't really a free-standing item in the US.

They are a must for another uniquely Canadian activity: going to the cottage, or going camping.

Both of those things are reasonably common in the upper Midwest of the US, where I now live. I actually think it's kind of interesting to think about how much of this stuff is regional in ways that cross the border and how much of it is regional in ways that don't. There definitely are some things that are distinctly Canadian, but I also think that some things seem more distinctly Canadian than they are, because a lot of ideas about the US are based on big cities on the coasts, which are not the areas that are geographically and, to some extent, culturally closest to Canada.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 8:30 AM on December 3, 2023 [2 favorites]

I think the ‘in between a diner and a food truck’ segment does tend much more heavily to be BBQ or rib shacks in the South, though. Google maps has fewer results for “ice cream shack Alabama”, for example, and from what I recall from my one brief drive through rural northern Alabama, I may have seen a little roadside ice cream stand in a shack style building but definitely saw bbq in the same format. But, again, that fully meets the fpp link’s description for what it claims makes Canadian chip stands unique.

Which isn’t to say that there isn’t anything unique about Canadian chip stands (poutine wasn’t as widespread in some of the Western provinces, though, when I last drove through); it’s just not the thing the link is claiming.
posted by eviemath at 8:35 AM on December 3, 2023

(ArbitraryAndCapricious, the non-food truck versions in my province also serve burgers, hot dogs, and milkshakes, or are ice cream stands that also serve fries and poutine. You can see this in some of the drawings, where the emphasis of the stand’s name or signage is on the ice cream. The just-fries places in my province are actual non-permanent food trucks, and have UK or British/Scottish-Canadian branding.)
posted by eviemath at 8:43 AM on December 3, 2023 [1 favorite]

My favorites were Big Momma's and the chip shop outside the adult bookstore. Nice find, thanks for sharing!

In Montreal, you'll find Lafleurs, which may be a bit more of a polished chain these days than the shacks of my youth that served up greasy, salty fries and Michigans that would burn your tongue on a subzero winter day.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 8:48 AM on December 3, 2023

Though I'm well versed in the trucks of Haliburton and the Kawarthas, shoutout to brown truck on St. George outside Sid Smith Hall in Toronto, small poutine, anything to drink for you!

(I think only sindark would get this)
posted by avocet at 9:04 AM on December 3, 2023

This is lovely.

Missing: none of the drawings I've glanced at show the legions of seagulls stalking you, not to mention the expert dive-bomber who will strike your arm to get you to drop the fries. (has happened to us)

Around Toronto, we do have some bougie "gourmet" food trucks doing all sorts of different fare... usually delicious, almost always restaurant-expensive. I see them most often corraled inside an exhibition hall as the food court for some big trade-show, or at some outdoor event.

Now I want ribs...
posted by Artful Codger at 9:37 AM on December 3, 2023 [4 favorites]

Thanks for posting this!
posted by AnyUsernameWillDo at 9:44 AM on December 3, 2023 [1 favorite]

The have Petra’s Place there! That shack specializes in German roadside food. Sausages, schnitzels, and the only place in Canada that I’ve seen currywurst. Excellent chips too.
posted by fimbulvetr at 10:02 AM on December 3, 2023 [1 favorite]

All true chip stands will have malt and white vinegar on the counter.
posted by fimbulvetr at 10:04 AM on December 3, 2023 [5 favorites]

I have been to a lot of the stands pictured, but they are missing my favourite: the Voyageur in Noëlville, Ontario.
posted by fimbulvetr at 10:11 AM on December 3, 2023

I doubt much of this is unique to Canada. I don't think Canadians actually understand what proper chips are; it's a completely different beast to a french fry and yet I've never come across anyone even trying to make the chips you can get from a typical chippy pretty much anywhere else in the Commonwealth.
posted by Flashman at 10:12 AM on December 3, 2023 [2 favorites]

"Chip stand". How absurd.
It's called a "Frietur", and wasn't a Canadian idea.
posted by Goofyy at 10:14 AM on December 3, 2023 [1 favorite]

BUD THE SPUD REPRESENT.

I think Bud the Spud (Halifax, NS: they call themselves a "chip wagon" but we just call it by name) is a food truck, properly speaking, since it's mobile, but it has a permit to park in a specific downtown location and is basically there spring to end of autumn during daylight (and maybe sometimes at night, I certainly remember getting drunk chips there at 3 a.m. but that might be a false memory).

I don't know if it's named after the Stompin' Tom song or if the song was named after the wagon.
posted by joannemerriam at 10:25 AM on December 3, 2023 [1 favorite]

I don't think Canadians actually understand what proper chips are; it's a completely different beast to a french fry

Please explain; I thought "french fries" and "chips" were interchangeable. ("Frites" is my favourite name for them.)

My ideal fries have been freshly cut from potatoes with skin on, and I don't know exactly what oil gives the best results. I don't like frozen fries as much.

Mrs C has a way of doing fries at home that I love: fresh-cut potatoes, you put those into a cold cast-iron fry pan, add enough vegetable oil to just cover them, then you heat all that from cold to golden. Drain, salt, enjoy. Takes a while, but seems foolproof.
posted by Artful Codger at 10:48 AM on December 3, 2023

I'm no Canadian, and I only lived in BC for just under a decade, but I've never seen or heard of a chip stand, so either I'm blind or unobservant (honestly, pretty likely), or this isn't much of a thing out west, so something about calling chip stands "ubiquitously Canadian" feels like calling crab shacks "a universal part of the American landscape" – technically correct in certain areas of the country, but completely alien in a big old swath of it.
posted by wakannai at 11:03 AM on December 3, 2023 [6 favorites]

I love the art! I agree that a chip shack, or (perhaps fry truck in the US) is rare, to the point if I saw one, I would remember. Here in the Southwest (at least for this argument) A mexican food truck is much more likely. Of course I've also seen burgers and dogs here, but tacos are ubiquitous.
posted by evilDoug at 11:22 AM on December 3, 2023 [1 favorite]

As a Canadian, I can say that there is nothing more Ontarian than thinking something that you find in Ontario must be a pan-Canadian (you'll find these in Ontario and somewhat different variants to the east, but not really at all to the west) and must be some kind of identifiably, uniquely Canadian thing.
posted by ssg at 11:42 AM on December 3, 2023 [17 favorites]

It's been 30 years due me (i live on the west coast now) but there really is nothing like feeling the hot air pouring on you from the chip truck after a cold skate on the canal and diving into a big sloppy pile of chips, curds and gravy.
posted by klanawa at 12:18 PM on December 3, 2023 [4 favorites]

The ur-poutine as far as I'm concerned is found after a day of hiking or canoeing or skiing in Quebec, and you stop at the side of the road coming back still all dirty and sweaty and starving and the fries are cut exactly right, the gravy is saucy and salty, and the curds are still squeaky. Also the guy serving you has a super dirty apron on, is probably smoking, and has an hard to parse accent from like, La Beauce somewhere.

You can also stop at the ur-truck on your way to a cottage or a camp. I think what makes is Canadian is really its seasonality. Poutine for me used to be exclusively a summer thing (not a skier) and it tastes like fries and lakeside sunsets.

In Sackville. NB, it was Mr. Chips* and they had the best fried clams as well as cheeseburgers. They were a common spot for the RCMP to get snacks, which probably got awkward at times since (this was pre-legalization) they were also apparently where you got your pot.** It was rumoured that you could get a gun as well, but...university town man.

* Next to the Quik Mart, which meant we would for a "do a Quickie's run for Mr. Chips" which sounds, you know, different.

** I never saw this but totally believe it.
posted by warriorqueen at 1:48 PM on December 3, 2023 [3 favorites]

not really at all to the west

I believe you, but my MIL's first summer job, in the mid-60s, was in a chip truck in a logging area in northern BC.
posted by warriorqueen at 1:49 PM on December 3, 2023 [3 favorites]

It's called a "Frietur", and wasn't a Canadian idea

The project does include a few frituren:

Friet Keukenhof
100% Natuurrlijke
Friet Truck
posted by zamboni at 2:02 PM on December 3, 2023 [2 favorites]

Man, the kneejerk reaction to anyone trying to say "canadians have a thing" in this thread is bizarre. I split my time between the US and Canada, am from the US, and eat at american food trucks all the time. Never in the slightest have I encountered an ontario/quebec-style chip truck in the US.
posted by advil at 2:03 PM on December 3, 2023 [13 favorites]

I, for one, am not saying that Canadians don’t have a thing. I’m saying that the specific thing highlighted as the pull quote, “It is not a food truck. It is not a diner. The very nature of the chip stand is defined by it being a combination of both.” is not the uniquely Canadian feature here. It would be like saying that only Canadians have warm knit winter hats. You could say that only Canadians have toques, because calling such a hat a “toque” is a uniquely Canadian thing; but the style of hat itself is not.
posted by eviemath at 2:14 PM on December 3, 2023 [3 favorites]

The comments are frustrating. Perhaps because I was raised in Toronto, lived for seven years in Eastern Ontario and then moved away to the west coast that I recognize there is something in this collection of trucks and stands. It’s not that a “chip truck” is a precise description of what these things are. But it is a vernacular term that describes a kind of food operation within an ineffable but definitely unique context. I found it interesting that the term itself evokes incredibly nostalgic feelings for me that pulls me into a region and a time that feels like the 1990s that extends from Peterborough to the Outaouais. Why is that? Because the idea of “chip truck” points to something uniquely located in eastern Ontario and western Quebec, in a kind of liminal region that is both English and French and requires something of a rural sensibility even if the chip truck is parked on Cooper Street at Bank right under my office window.

Those of you arguing that these aren’t unique aren’t really feeling what these are pointing to. Much like the Buddha’s teaching about the finger pointing at the moon you seem enamoured by the hand and you’re missing the beautiful glowing thing it is directing you to. That thing is a zeitgeist and not much more clear than that. “You had to be there” perhaps. And if you were, these will trigger a flood of memories for you.
posted by salishsea at 2:24 PM on December 3, 2023 [16 favorites]

I agree with salishsea that there has to be a beautiful glowing aura around the truck. Here in Maryland we have kettle corn stands by the side of country roads where tourists may drive by, and there might be soft drinks or other food, but the idea is that people in cars will screech to a halt to buy freshly popped popcorn from a stand that has been in that location for decades. In North Carolina, you might stop and buy boiled peanuts. On the entrance roads to the Long Island expressway, it would be "regular" coffee. All of them beautifully glowing.
posted by acrasis at 3:16 PM on December 3, 2023 [1 favorite]

→ I don't think Canadians actually understand what proper chips are

I'm from Glasgow. My people are from Ayrshire. Our brains are tuned to the resonant frequency of the potato, our arteries to the siren sizzle of the chip. I can absolutely assure you, as someone who has huddled in many a doorway and close-mouth to eat my chips in paper out of the rain in Glasgow, that Canada does chips. It does them well.

I don't know many chip trucks: we don't have a cottage, and have only been invited cottaging a few times. (And, man!, was that culture shock learning what “cottaging” means here, leading to the awkward question: “And people here, um, invite you to go cottaging … with their family??”). Those horrid frozen and flash-fried string fries have no place in a chip truck. The chips should have a bit of heft, with the nice soft interior of the real thing.
posted by scruss at 4:47 PM on December 3, 2023 [11 favorites]

Canadian style fries are good all right, but they're no flaamse frieten. The only place I've had that light amber, substantial, low moisture, dip baton chip in Canada is at Moo Frites, and they went under. What are we missing? Is it that we can't grow Bintje potatoes here?
posted by anthill at 8:03 PM on December 3, 2023

As a Canadian, I can say that there is nothing more Ontarian than thinking something that you find in Ontario must be a pan-Canadian.

I can think of one thing that is more Canadian than this: non-Ontarians seizing any opportunity to complain about Ontario :)
posted by senor biggles at 9:11 PM on December 3, 2023 [8 favorites]

Mod note: One removed. Eviemath, you've repeated your point several times; please give this one some breathing room now. Thanks.
posted by taz (staff) at 1:21 AM on December 4, 2023

I grew up eating at various chip trucks under the bridge in Sarnia, Ontario, and I’m just now realizing that this is the only other context in which fries are commonly called chips (other than fish’n’ chips) in Ontario.
posted by The Card Cheat at 2:43 AM on December 4, 2023 [1 favorite]

My fave is one off the 401 near the Hwy 15 exit. It's got these weathered yet cheerful wooden animals and children. We don't own a car, but we are part of a car share, so during the summer we will just drive around rural Eastern Ontario looking for interesting things, so this chip truck is often on the way to adventure. One summer we stopped to eat frites avec sauce and saw a group of wedding goers sitting at the picnic tables in their fancy get-up. Never did figure out if they were eating before because the event might go long, or if they were eating after, soaking up reception booze. These days, I am thrilled that chip trucks offer veggie burgers. Well, some do.
posted by Kitteh at 4:35 AM on December 4, 2023 [2 favorites]

They really are everywhere in Ontario.

Like, when I book a trip to a cottage, campground or a canoe trip, I will assume that within a few minute's drive we could pull up and have fries on the way out.

This is with a camping radius of 3 hours in 3 out of 4 compass directions. (You hit USA in the remaining direction)

And even leaving town, there are slightly bougier ones. Law and Orders, Burgers and Fries Forever, etc.

In town, there is one 10 minutes walk in a Canadian Tire parking lot from my home (3 season) - that one is a stationary truck - another was just up the road from my office pre-covid, a "real" stand in the corner of a parking lot of a grocery store (all-season: kept open by high school students lunch money).

All of them serving fries, burgers, pogos, poutine. 9/10 of them in the same cardboard open top box and paper bag system.
posted by NotAYakk at 11:52 AM on December 4, 2023 [4 favorites]