The poutine signifies a lot at The Acre and for good reason. Since the departure of Bushwick’s premier Canadian-themed bar (RIP UpNorth), the hearty cheese and potato scramble has been hard to find in North Brooklyn. But for those willing to travel a little further north themselves, the plate comes in a variety of forms on the menu of the constantly re-opening Ridgewood brunch spot The Acre.

There, poutine is not so much a staple, but the restaurant’s most memorable contribution to the quietly gentrifying locale palette, where upmarket bodega sandwiches come in at least three different forms within a block’s walking distance and all with different kinds of bread. 

Fittingly, the approach that ​​Colleen and Ian Bock, owners of The Acre, take to poutine will not be familiar to most up north fast food denizens. There are no pools of dirt-brown gravy topping cold fries, nor half-melted fields of curd. Instead, the plate is polite and shaven down: sit-down restaurant potatoes situated, with dignified distance, next to thick blocks of cheese and breakfast sausage pork (or its vegan alternative) and a variety of miscellaneous fixings.