The Corner Office - Disco Brunch Poutine

I recently paid a visit to the Corner Office restaurant on 14th and Curtis in downtown Denver.  It seems to be a trendy, hip joint.  Which would explain why I never heard of it.  Lucky for me that they offer poutine on the weekends.  Denver has started to slowly embrace the dish, rather oddly as an adventurous dish prepared by chefs.  Considering its late-night, after-hours reputation in Canada I find it kinda funny that it is presented this way in downtown Denver.  The again, I've seen more than a few horrified looks when I explain what poutine is, makes sense to dress it up until acceptance grows.

That's what Corner Office is doing.  Not that I have an issue with it, it sounded great!  On the weekends they have what they call the Disco Brunch menu, there's only one poutine dish.  It's slow cooked duck and gravy, fries, mozzarella cheese curds topped off with two eggs over easy.  I ordered the eggs over medium.

The dish shows up, decent presentation, the waiter warns me that the skillet is hot.  I dig in and right away I love the flavors, the strong duck flavor mixed with the egg yolk, the texture of the fries.  Very tasty, savory, salty, stringy melted cheese all going well with the cup of coffee, black.

The eggs are well cooked to order and seasoned with pepper and something else I can't quite identify.  The fries could be a bit crispier, but then I'm biased to slightly over-done fries.  The gravy is tangy and the duck is good too, but not much of it.

And then it hits me, there's cheese.  Stringy, melted cheese.  But no curds.  Did the curds get completely melted in the skillet?  There's no squeaky cheese curds.  This is not good.

You see any curds in there?  Me neither...

The lack of the curds is really a deal breaker for seriously presenting this as poutine.  Curds add another dimension of texture to the dish.  I really did like the dish but it wasn't poutine.  It wasn't quite the dish it could have been.