While searching for the origins of Canada’s most famous fried dish, journalist Justin Giovannetti Lamothe finds a reflection not only of the country’s intricate history, but also of his own neglected cultural roots.

The recipe is deceptively simple—fried potatoes, cheese curds, gravy—but the story behind it is as rich and complex as Canada itself. Poutine is the closest thing we have to a national dish. As its popularity has spread across the country and beyond, it has become what the baguette is to France: a kind of national symbol, as immediately Canadian as the toque, beaver or hockey puck.

Yet the odd, winding history of poutine has never been written—until now. Following lore about the dish’s rise from the road-side chip wagons of rural Quebec, award-winning journalist Justin Giovannetti Lamothe tells a story that mirrors the growth of modern Canada and the shifting cultural gap between La Belle Province and its English-speaking neighbours.

As the son of an anglophone mother and a francophone father, Giovannetti Lamothe is perfectly suited to the task: much of his childhood was spent on the outskirts of Trois-Rivières, a stone’s throw from the region where—according to local lore—poutine was invented sometime in the 1950s or ’60s. As he tracks poutine’s origins and wanderings, he also reveals the evolving nature of his relationship to his father and, with this, to the Québécois heritage he once drifted away from.

After reading the delectable Poutine, you’ll never see—or taste—this humbly famous food in quite the same way again.