You can eat poutine any time of year, but this Quebecoise treat tastes best when it’s really, really cold outside. I’m talking Montreal in January cold, the kind of frigidness that invades unusual places like your eyeballs and your teeth. Now that I don’t drive a car anymore, I don’t mind winter. I enjoy having an excuse to stay home, drinking dark beer and swaddling myself in layers of wool–the better to hide the gut I’m packing from savoring my favorite foods. Poutine is actually very simple–it’s just french fries and cheese curds, melted into savory gobs under a layer of steaming gravy. But it is somewhat tricky to execute. Proper curds are not easy to find, the fries should be fresh, the gravy ratio MUST be perfect, and a snowstorm backdrop doesn’t hurt either. Unlike your typical diner cheese fries, which fill you with self-loathing and regret, poutine, when it’s done right, warms your cockles, which I believe are located somewhere somewhere between your gullet and your spleen.

Poutine is pretty rare in the States but there are a few places in New York City that serve it. On Saturday, I checked out TPoutine on Ludlow Street, a relatively-new burgers-and-fries shop advantageously located in the booze-soaked Lower East Side. A classic poutine ran a steep $7.25, and came served in an appealing iron skillet, the curds just beginning to melt in their gravy bath. The cheese curds tasted authentic, and were generously-sized, although this possibly prevented them from completely melting. The fries, to their credit, maintained a fair amount of crispness, but the gravy didn’t taste much more than hot. A friend’s plate arrived with entirely too much gravy, which soon made the fries soggy, so it may be to your advantage to tell them to go light. All-in-all, this did a fair job satiating my poutine craving, but I’m told it’s not as tasty as the stuff you’d find in Montreal. TPoutine is open til 5am on weekends, so I could foresee a making late-night pit stop, but I’d probably keep looking for the really good stuff–my next destinations will likely be Mile End or Sheep Station in Brooklyn. There’s also decent and cheaper version available at Pommes Frites in the East Village.

TPoutine
168 Ludlow St between Stanton St & Houston St.
Tue-Wed 12pm-2am, Thu-Sat 12pm-5am, Sun 12pm-2am

Papabubble, a downtown candy lab specializing in flavorful hand-made hard candies, smells like the inside of a sugar bowl. Jars of crayon-colored treats line the walls, alongside oversized spiralling lollipops and jewel-hued ring pops. There’s usually a couple of candymakers at work behind the counter, in what amounts to a free show. Today they’re busy chopping up long glossy sticks of spun sugar into bite-sized discs. “Is that a ghost?” I ask, pointing to the tiny freakish face imprinted on each one, and I’m told it’s actually a special Hannibal Lecter Halloween candy. I’m handed a sample, which dissolves into bright mango on my tongue.

Watching candy being made is a strangely mesmerizing experience (see ropes of candy being pulled by hand in this CoolHunting video) and since Papabubble makes custom candies and sugar sculptures on request, there’s usually some new part of the process to watch, or a different flavor to sample, each time you visit. The prices for pre-packaged candies are not cheap–2oz bags run $5, 7oz small jars are $14.50, and a one-of-a-kind ring pop is $20—but the candies come in beautiful bespoke designs each one packs a lot of flavor.

Varieties include pink grapefruit, raspberry, anise, bergamot, pear, fizzy cola, red chili, ginger lemon, and several others. My favorite so far is watermelon with salt and chili (spicy, sweet, salty–just like the watermelon sugar cocktail from Mayahuel in candy form). This time around I did not spot the watermelon candies but I was sorely tempted by the black and white “Halloween mix” and ended up purchasing a big cherry-flavored black heart lollipop ($7). Highly recommended stop for sampling, browsing, or picking out a cute gift.

Papabubble
380 Broome St. between Mott St. and Mulberry St.
Tue.-Sat. 12pm-9pm, Sun 12pm-6pm
Other locations in Amersterdam, Barcelona, and Tokyo

I’ll let you in on a secret: Frankie’s Spuntino, a cozy spot for reliably delicious Italian fare, serves a pretty damn good brunch. Just a few doors down from where weekend hordes queue up outside Clinton Street Bakery, I had some of the finest french toast in town–without waiting for a table. When I heard Frankie’s was opening Cafe Pedlar next door, I dutifully marched down to Clinton Street to sit in a sunbeam and sample some pastries. Keeping up Snackish is a dirty job sometimes but someone has to do it.

Cafe Pedlar serves Stumptown coffee, a name I hear thrown around so much I’m starting to wonder if they’re trying to annex a little bit of Starbuck’s turf. No matter, as the barista coaxed a fine cappuccino ($3.75) from the La Marzocco espresso machine. The pastries were even better. I sampled a moist and spongey olive oil cake with lemon zest ($3.50) and the pièce de résistance, a slice of crunchy french toast ($4.00). This was french toast imagined as pastry, a piece of eggy bread encased in a crisp maple syrup shell, served room temperature and eatable on the go, if you don’t mind sticky fingers.

The room will feel familiar to anyone living on the Lower East Side–a narrow, ground-floor dwelling with brick walls and few windows. Spartan’s the word when your main decoration is a shelf of wine bottles. But the open tables and mellow Bob Dylan tunes on the stereo invited lingering, whereas many of my favorite coffee shops (sorry Think, Abraço, and Ninth Street Espresso) seem designed to hustle me back onto the street. Next time I’m bringing a book and trying one of their delicately-twisted soft pretzels.

Cafe Pedlar and Frankies Spuntino also have Cobble Hill locations.

Cafe Pedlar
17 Clinton St. between Houston and Stanton. 7am-5pm Daily

Home of the best $1 dumpling deal in town, this Chinatown mainstay is looking a lot spiffier these days. Back when it was known only as Dumpling House, it was half as wide, twice as dirty, and usually steamy from the vats of cooking dumplings. The long line of locals waiting outside was the only sign that anything tasty was going going on in there, and speaking Chinese certainly helped in jockeying to be the next order. Now with snappy new signage and a relatively spacious seating area, this feels like a whole new place. Fortunately, the dumplings still rock.

They’re pricier now (4 for $1 instead of 5) but it’s worth it. Get the pork and chive dumplings–fried-crisp yet tender pockets of juicy pork (defuse an embarrassing squirt of juice by nibbling a hole in your dumpling first, instead of biting it in half, similar to eating a soup dumpling). The sesame pancake sandwiches, at $1.50-$2.00, are one of the best deals around. Sesame pancake is a fluffy, buttery wedge of flatbread studded with sesame seeds and stuffed with fillings, like fried egg and cucumber ($1.50) or pork, cucumber, carrots, and cilantro ($2.00). The pork sandwich was my favorite although ideally there would be more filling to balance out the thick, greasy bread. I thought the just-barely-spicy hot and sour soup with tofu and mushrooms was okay, but I loved the fact that a hefty bowl was only $1.25. The only thing I didn’t like was the steamed vegetable bun, which was oddly rubbery. Fried is obviously the way to go here.

The menu (expanded from the one on menupages) is packed with items that cost under $3, so no surprise it gets busy here during the evening rush and orders may take ten or fifteen minutes. But the pork dumplings are undeniably delicious and so cheap it feels like stealing. There’s also a 14th St. location, expect to pay more there.

Vanessa’s Dumpling House, 118a Eldridge Street between Grand and Broome
7:30am-10:30pm every day
Frozen dumplings available 50/$9.00

Let me ask you this–could you contentedly quaff the thickest, darkest, highest-alcohol beers in equatorial climes? Hell, no. To enjoy a beverage like this, it has to be COLD out there–so cold that touching your face feels like being uncomfortably close to a stranger. So cold that your glasses fog up when you go indoors anywhere, leaving you in a dorky little cloud, helplessly smearing water vapor around your lenses. You certainly couldn’t enjoy Brooklyn Brewery’s Black Chocolate Stout, unless you’re well-versed in January’s indignities.

Dark, slightly bitter chocolate, malt, and alcoholic warmth predominate this pitch-black brew, which only gets better upon sipping. Despite the high ABV (10%), the chocolate flavor masks the alcohol fairly well, and considering the beyond-Belgian bang you get from 12oz, it’s also a good deal ($11.99 for a sixpack at Whole Foods Beer Room). Treat yourself to a bottle and then try to remember why you hated this time of year in the first place.

A- on Beer Advocate

Whole Foods Bowery Beer Room
95 Houston Street near Second Ave/Chrystie St. 8am-11pm