The Slider

Today I have seen the culmination of the entire history of human culinary progression, and its name is Slider. Before I get into a description of this juggernaut of deliciousness, though, I need to talk about the Swedish Beaver.

The Swedish Beaver is an institution at Queen's University, and has been for the past several years. For those of you who aren't from Kingston, the Swedish Beaver is a large, blue-and-yellow painted food truck that parks itself in front of Miller Hall every day from mid-morning until late afternoon. To call it a mere chip truck, however, is to do it great injustice. This is the chip truck perfected. In fact, the fries usually take back seat to the rest of the menu, which is made fresh, with high quality ingredients, and at mind-bogglingly reasonable prices. The whole thing is made better by the fact that the Beaver serves some really out-there food for a chip truck, on top of the standard fries, hamburgers and sausages. Take the Gordon Special, for example. It's a grilled chicken breast, rubbed with some secret concoction of delectable spices, sliced up and put into a garlic pesto wrap with tomato, lettuce, red onion and potato salad. But not just any potato salad. Swedish potato salad, which is to say, potato salad perfected. It's got the perfect creamy consistency - not so thick that it feels heavy, not so thin that it gets all runny in a wrap, just the perfect level of ephemeral creaminess to bind the salad and wrap together in perfect unity. Also, it's got capers in it. Amazing. And it's four dollars. I can barely get a bottle of juice for $4 at the rest of the food service outlets on campus.

Now that you have some context, I need to describe the Slider, and for full effect, you really need to pause and visualize just how unbelievably satisfying this would be for lunch. The slider is a whole wheat wrap, filled with poutine and grilled bacon. That's it. It's fiendishly simple in its arrangement, and yet the whole is so much more than the sum of its parts. For starters, poutine is a world-class dish. I've written before about the elements of a good poutine, and this poutine had it all. The fries were moist and fluffy on the inside, yet incredibly crispy on the outside. The cheese was fresh white curds, and the gravy was salty and gooey and excellent. Now, that's all well and good, but I've always found the tactile experience of eating a poutine to be somewhat less than ideal. You've got this styrofoam container (unnecessary waste), and, typically, some crappy plastic fork with tines that bend when you try to spear a fry. Now, take that same delicious food and throw it in a wrap, and you have a highly portable, edible container that lets you devour your poutine with one hand. Also, it's whole wheat, so it's healthy... right?

Poutine in a wrap is borderline genius on its own, but when you throw some bacon in there... I mean, come on. I'm not sure that's even legal.

In the interests of fairness, I should point out that there are two potential weaknesses of the Slider. One: by virtue of the incredible freshness of the fries they serve at the Swedish Beaver, the Slider can be a bit hot to hold. This is mitigated by the fact that your brain's sensory centres are completely overwhelmed by poutine and bacon, so you probably won't notice. Second, squidgy (that is to say, non-crispy) bacon tends to want to be consumed all at once. It can be hard to bite off half of the bacon and leave some for the bottom of the wrap. Crispy bacon would be better.

Overall, though, I think the Slider might be chip truck junk food perfected. As a pleasant bonus, the Swedish Beaver is parked a mere one block from the Kingston General Hospital, so when your ensuing heart attack kicks in, you don't have far to go.