"The wafer-thin slices of beef with truffle oil were nothing short of a culinary coup d'état. The flavor and texture combinations were surprising—and beautiful. As I ate, I noticed waiters serving a dish that looked like a giant pink light bulb. The light bulb, it turned out, was an enormous plume of maple-sugar candy floss"

Denis was trying to be helpful. I think the man actually felt sympathy—a rare quality in a waiter. He put a hand on my shoulder, looked me square in the eye, and said in a thick French-Canadian accent: "The foie gras poutine and the pig's foot stuffed with foie gras are too much for one person." I must have looked crestfallen, because Denis addressed me the way one does a small child who has lost something precious. "Why don't you have the Duck in a Can?" he said, smiling and nodding his head enthusiastically. "It is a magret of duck with foie gras." But that only made things worse.

Fifteen minutes earlier, life couldn't have been better. My taxi had pulled up in front of Au Pied de Cochon, in Montreal's stylish Plateau neighborhood, and I'd prepared myself for dinner at a restaurant said to be at the forefront of the new Québécois gastronomy. Inside, beer taps were flowing, waiters were humming by with platters of fresh oysters, and good-looking men and women were beginning a night on the town by plying themselves with absurdly rich food.

My troubles began when Denis, a dark-haired Montrealer with a friendly face, came by and handed me the menu, at which point I was stricken by a condition doctors might call foie gras–induced paralysis. Foie gras, the smoothest known substance in the universe, was in almost every dish. Naturally, my inclination was to order all of the items that contained it. I wanted the foie gras cromesquis, the foie gras salt tart, and the foie gras hamburger, followed by the foie gras grilled cheese, with a terrine of foie gras on the side. Denis returned and told me about the lobster roll, which is served on homemade bread with slices of cured foie gras. I wanted one of those too. Sensing my anxiety, he visited the bar and returned with a pint of Griffon blond, a local microbrew. Good move. The beer cleared my head sufficiently for me to remember why I was at Au Pied de Cochon in the first place: the poutine.

Poutine is an artery-clogging Québécois dish consisting of french fries and cheese curd covered in gravy. You will find it at the province's greasy spoons and pubs—even McDonald's and Burger King have concocted their own versions—and its greatest devotees are inebriated college students and rural types who operate heavy machinery. The poutine at Au Pied de Cochon, however, is no ordinary poutine, for it has one further ingredient: foie gras. This addition is what food historians refer to as a refinement, which is what happens when a visionary chef takes a common dish and playfully reinvents it using more exotic ingredients. It is just one of many riffs engineered by chef Martin Picard. Others include the grilled cheese sandwich with Pied-de-Vent—a raw-milk Camembert-style cheese from the Magdalen Islands—and a maki roll made of salmon and (what else?) foie gras.