Tag Archives: CNE

by Aaron Brophy | September 8, 2020 · 2:44 pm

Things I Ate At The C.N.E. In 2020

This is a split image of three stunt foods prepared at home instead of eaten at the Canadian National Exhibition, which was cancelled due to COVID-19. — Things I ate at the C.N.E. in 2020, COVID-19 Lockdown edition.

For those who aren’t the best at intuitive leaps, the headline “Things I Ate At The C.N.E. In 2020” is a lie. There was no Canadian National Exhibition in Toronto this year. It was waylaid, like pretty much every other good thing in the world, by the COVID-19 pandemic.

There was, however, a Canadian National Exhibition in the hearts of the Risky Fuel staff. Or, more specifically, the gastrointestinal tracts.

Based on a low-key dare from Sarah, I decided to attempt a number of Ex-inspired near-stunt foods in the hopes of recreating the magic of eating weird shit while wandering through a giant parking lot and getting accosted by carnies.

The guidelines for this experiment were reasonably simple: All food experiments would take place over the Labour Day long weekend, just like the actual C.N.E., and the things I made would attempt to replicate, or be inspired by actual stunt foods at the The Ex.

Two other things:
1) There’d be nothing deep-fried because it would stink up our apartment too much.
And 2), we’d attempt to make items that didn’t actually suck.
We also contemplated walking around in the sun for three hours straight to replicate the C.N.E. sunstroke effect, but were ultimately too lazy to follow through on that.

Here, then, are the things I ate at the C.N.E. in 2020 (COVID National Exhibition Edition):

Pickle Lemonade. This was based on a real drink that was available at 2019 edition of the Ex and featured standard store-bought lemonade, two ounces of pickle juice and a couple cocktail pickles. Beyond being a touch weird on the palette, this mostly ended up tasting like regular lemonade. 5.7 / 10

Double Wiener Cheese Curd Pretzel Hot Dog. This was mostly about trying to create a double wiener double entendre (which mostly failed) and make use of a pretzel bun that was much larger than I thought it was when I first put my two hands around it in the grocery store. There was a lot of bun — probably too much — and I had difficulty fitting it all into my mouth. 5.8 / 10

Baked Apple Wedge Cheesecake Cheese Curd Crumble. This was a creation built mostly by alliteration featuring baked apple wedges, disassembled bits of a vanilla cheesecake scored at Metro and pieces of cheese curd. It was… surprisingly OK. The apples could have been baked a little more to make them more broken down, but as a trio, they were all complimentary-ish. 6.2 / 10

Bacon-Wrapped Veggie Corn Dog. This perversion was inspired by the butt-stupid 50-50 ground beef/veggie meat substitute packages that have been appearing in grocery stores. I took an Yves Veggie Corn Dog, wrapped it in bacon, then baked the shit out it until the bacon was properly cooked. The result? Kinda good. I get that this was a silly combination meant mostly to irritate people, but the Yves corn dogs are reasonably good, and bacon is usually good, so the combination of the two of them ended up reasonably solid. 7.3 / 10

Boston Cream Donut Milkshake. In a normal Ex year, we’d have one of Fran’s ever-evolving mega-milkshakes (see Fran’s Blueberry Pie Milkshake, Fran’s PB&J Milkshake), which are usually some combination of a normal milkshake + a baked good of some sort. Inspired by both these shakes and our number one discovery from last year, the Cheesecake Factory General Custard Sundae, we went in on the mega-shake mash-up. This shake contained well-blendered Breyer’s Cremery Style Natural Vanilla Ice Cream, CT Bakery Mini Boston Cream Donuts, 2% milk and a topper of Kraft Cool Whip and Selection Chocolaty Sundae Topping. What resulted was remarkably good. The secret bonus here was that the shake ended up having clumps of tasty Boston Cream gloops that would randomly pop into your mouth, creating a bonus experience that elevated it beyond a normal shake. 7.3 / 10

Brisket Sandwich. Every year at the CNE we usually break down and have at least a couple “normal”-type things. We had some leftover brisket, some coleslaw, some crusty buns and some gouda, so… Brisket Sandwich. Add some barbecue sauce to taste and the result was something altogether fine. 7.2 / 10

Peanut Butter Ice Cream Tortilla Wrap. Last year we got tricked by the garbage pail liner that was the Snickle Dog, a hot dog and pickle wrapped in a deep-fried tortilla and covered with chocolate syrup. I tried to break that curse with the Peanut Butter Ice Cream Tortilla Wrap, a combination of Irresistible Peanut Butter Ice Cream and Hershey Kiss Cereal snuggled in a tortilla and covered in chocolate syrup. This did not work. Hershey Kiss Cereal appears to be nonsense, and the flavour of the tortillas and the peanut butter ice cream were just not complimentary. 5.1 / 10

Pickle Pizza. Inspired by a real CNE food item, this was normal cheese pizza with pickle slices on top. It was also fundamentally unnecessary and I question the smarts of anyone who paid real money at the Exhibition to have one of these slices. 5.2 / 10

Portuguese Custard Tart Milkshake. This was meant to be the grande finale of Canadian National Exhibit-ish weekend, a fancy-ass milkshake inspired by the Cheesecake Factory Sundae from last year and build similarly to the Boston Cream Shake, except using a superior pastry, the Portuguese Custard Tart. It was, however, slightly less than the Boston Cream Shake. The main reason being that the custard gloops just didn’t magically gloop in one’s mouth the same way the Boston Cream did. I’m not saying it was bad. It was still a hella solid milkshake, but it fell just short of its cousin. 7.2 / 10

Additional reading:

Things I ate at the CNE in 2019. Including the Snickle Dog and the Cheesecake Factory General Custard Sundae.

Things I didn’t eat at the CNE in 2018 because I boycotted to support unionized workers who were fighting The Man.

Things I ate at the CNE in 2017. Including Deep Fried Chicken Foot and Savory Fried Spaghetti Donut Ball.

Things I ate at the CNE in 2016. Including Bug Dog with Roasted Crickets and Deep Fried Butter Tarts.

Things I ate at the CNE in 2015. Including Corrado’s S&M Burger and Iron Skillet’s Frosted Flakes Chicken On A Stick.

Things I ate at the CNE in 2014. Including Fran’s Thanksgiving Turkey Waffle and Coco’s Fried Chicken Cocoa Chicken.

Things I ate at the C.N.E. in 2013. Including Nutella Jalapeno Poppers and the S’more Dog.

Things I ate at the C.N.E. in 2012. Including the Chocolate Eclair Dog and Bacon Nation Nutella BBBLT.

Things I ate at the C.N.E. in 2011. Including the Krispy Kreme Hamburger and Deep Fried Twix.

Things I ate at the C.N.E. in 2010. Including Deep Fried Butter and Taco In A Bag.

Things I Ate At The C.N.E. In 2019

After a year off from the Canadian National Exhibition I got back on the bullshit again, making the most out of one well-targeted weekday trip and a couple delivered care packages to help bump up my food explorations. It’s interesting the perspective you get when you step back for a year from a near-compulsion. One of the big things I realized this year was that most of the “stunt” food has become wildly, insultingly overpriced when one considers each item’s ingredients and the comparable non-stunt versions of similar items which are also available at the fair. It’s a psychological barrier that’s real and takes a certain amount of “when am I ever going to try this again?” to motivate a person to eat this crap. That said, nobody with a still-flickering life force goes to the Ex to eat a plain cheese slice at Pizza Nova when there’s, wait for it, pickle pizza available to try (I didn’t try the pickle pizza… that’s not stunt enough).

The new craft beer & food truck & axe-throwing boutique area near what was once an activation wasteland by the Princes’ Gates was a wonderful addition to the Ex. Likewise, the Canadian Ninja Warrior set-up that has replaced the parkour show (parkour!) with the always-entertaining MC Abdominal was a great opportunity to watch physically perfect people fail like chumps. The SuperDogs show was fun, too (Pro tip: go to the first scheduled ‘Dog event of the day. It’s the only one that isn’t psycho-rammed with exasperated parents who don’t know how to navigate crowds.)

The biggest surprise of the year? A food-based redemption arc. If I didn’t experience it with my very own mouth hole I wouldn’t have believed it could happen. On to the food…

Here’s what I ate at the CNE in 2019:

Gnocchi Poutine. Gnocchi that was deep fried and covered in gravy with a smattering of cheese. The amount of cheese here left something to be desired (more cheese = good poutine, less cheese = cheap fucker bullshit hope-you-go-out-of-business “poutine”), but this was entirely acceptable. 7/10

Pineapple Dole Whip. I’ve got a friend who fiends for this stuff rather obsessively so when I encountered it for the first time I had to try it. And it’s… really refined pineapple slurpee? 6.9/10

Tokyo Street Dog. This was a tempura-battered hot dog wiener wrapped in seaweed and slathered in non-traditional (read: totally traditional if many parts of the world) condiments. It’s basically a normal hot dog with slightly left field condiments and it cost three times more than it should have. 5.6/10

Black Halo Bubblegum Ice Cream. It looks great with its bright blue ice cream in goth black sugar cone. There wasn’t actually much *flavour* to this bubblegum, though. Also, the aftermath of eating these 7% food colouring cones is two days of BRIGHT green dookies. 6/10

Black Halo Purple Haze Ice Cream. This was the grape ice cream version and it had much more of a flavour. 6.4/10

Fran’s Sriracha Peanut Butter Balls. You people really don’t need to put sriracha in everything. A rare slip-up from the usually-great Fran’s booth. 4.9/10

FUDGE BREAK!

My late, great grandmother used to make the most 10 out of 10-est fudge in the history of fudge and I’ve been fitfully chasing that high ever since. Would these compare? No, of course they wouldn’t. But there were still some good mouth times…

Milk Chocolate Fudge. The boringest of the CNE fudges and least able to keep up against the grandma scale. Still fudge. 7.1/10

Maple Fudge. Maple is a natural neighbour to Vanilla, the best fudge, but it’s also just a little bit… less. 7.7/10

Cookies ‘n’ Cream Fudge. They did not short on the “cookie” in this fudge, which is admirable in its way, but it also made for a fudge that was just structurally weird. Like a food with a bunch of speed bumps, which isn’t really what you want in a fudge. 7.3/10

Chocolate Maple Fudge. Two different textures and slightly incongruent vibes made for a fudge that was a little meh. Still fudge, though. 7.2/10

Skor Fudge. The Skor bits were pretty subtle. I think there might have been slivers of ginger in there making things slightly weird. If not the best, it was certainly the boldest. 7.5/10

BOOZE BREAK!

So yeah, we’re all for the new craft beer corner of the Ex that allows you to sit down for a drink in a spot that isn’t a) meant for gambling, b) has terrible country music, or c) features a whoooaaa Québécois Styx cover band.

Shiny Apple Cider and Pinot Noir. The wine jolt adds a pleasant little something to make this more than just a regular cider. Because this is booze… 10/10

Pommies Original Cider slushie. Remember life before the cider revolution? Neither do I, but it must have sucked. Anyway, it was hot as balls on the day we were here so the ability to hide out in a shaded corner and drink an alcoholic slushie was chef’s kiss. 10/10

Pommies Original Cider with Sangria. I’m not suddenly one of these all-in for cider + wine people, but this one was better than the other one. 10/10

FREE STUFF!

It used to be that the Ex was a glorious place for cheap eats and free samples. Then for a long time it wasn’t. It appears that a few companies have figured out freebies are a good thing, though.

Takis Fuego Extreme. It’s been a second since people have been marketing “Extreme” shit and it warmed my soul in the exact same way seeing a retro Maple Leafs jacket makes you go, “Oh neat… but I’d never wear that bullshit.” This was free, so I appreciated it, but after trying it I’d never pay money for it. 5.7/10

Maple Lodge Spicy Ultimate Chicken Frankfurter. Of all the weird things I was expecting in my food adventure, a redemption story was not one of them. Back in 2012 I tried what was unquestionably the worst county fair stunt food ever made — The Maple Lodge Chocolate Eclair Hot Dog. It’s exactly what it sounds like and it’s profoundly stupid. A couple years later Maple Lodge gave up their spot in the Food Building, seemingly disappearing under the weight of their shame, which I blame entirely on that idea. But this year they were back with a fancy outdoor grill barbecue setup and were offering free samples of their various jumbo dogs… and they were exactly the kind of thing you’d want to grill up at a barbecue. 7/10

THE DARING, AUDACIOUS, DELICIOUS AND DISGUSTING

Carla’s Cookie Box Salted Caramel Butter Tart. Look, I’ve been on butter tarts (no raisin, fuck that) since long before there were festivals and pop-up shops and other bullshit foodies hopping on the tartwagon. Getting off my high horse for a second, though, some of these new soldiers in the butter tart zeitgeist are making awesome shit. Like this. 8/10

Carla’s Cookie Box Nutella Butter Tart. This looks like it got hit by a hammer ’cause it suffered a bit while in transportation, but holy shit was this delicious. My mouth is watering from just looking at this stupid picture and remembering how perfect this thing was. 8.9.10

Super Fries K-Pop Fries. There’s a certain amount of low-r “stunt” food that isn’t really stunt food at all so much as it’s just “food from a different culture.” These kimchi fries would probably qualify. Sarah and I have been chasing after the perfect kimchi fries ever since our beloved Korean Cowboy restaurant closed a couple years back to make way for condos. These were fine but they weren’t *special*. The quest continues. 6/10

Snickle Dog. And in the exact opposite of a redemption arc, we’ve got the fooled-me-twice of the Snickle Dog. Technically, I haven’t been fooled twice by the Snickle Dog, a hot dog and pickle wrapped in a deep-fried tortilla and covered, for some reason, with chocolate syrup. But I *have* tried its very close cousin, the Canadian Bacon Pickle Ball (2017), which is a piece of lukewarm garbage corn dog perverted to include a chunk of pickle. I was tricked by the idea of deep fried tortilla-fication but let my folly be a lessen to others — do not Snickle Dog. 4/10

Cheesecake Factory General Custard Sundae. Cheesecake Factory has taken over the Wild Child Kitchen fresh juice spot in the Food Building, which means I no longer have access to concoctions that make me shit beet juice within 30 minutes of drinking them. This, however, has turned out to be a bit of a blessing because the Factory created my favourite thing of the year, the General Custard Sundae. Made up of a Portuguese tart, vanilla soft serve ice cream, hot caramel sauce and whipped cream, this is an incredible collision of complimentary flavours. Vanilla ice cream (and vanilla, in general) gets a bad rap because white people ruin everything, but it’s amazing. And when you mash it up with a Portuguese tart and a gooey pile of hot caramel it creates something cosmic from something that seems so simple and obvious. 9/10

Additional reading:

Things I didn’t eat at the CNE in 2018 because I boycotted to support unionized workers who were fighting The Man.

Things I ate at the CNE in 2017. Including Deep Fried Chicken Foot and Savory Fried Spaghetti Donut Ball.

Things I ate at the CNE in 2016. Including Bug Dog with Roasted Crickets and Deep Fried Butter Tarts.

Things I ate at the CNE in 2015. Including Corrado’s S&M Burger and Iron Skillet’s Frosted Flakes Chicken On A Stick.

Things I ate at the CNE in 2014. Including Fran’s Thanksgiving Turkey Waffle and Coco’s Fried Chicken Cocoa Chicken.

Things I ate at the C.N.E. in 2013. Including Nutella Jalapeno Poppers and the S’more Dog.

Things I ate at the C.N.E. in 2012. Including the Chocolate Eclair Dog and Bacon Nation Nutella BBBLT.

Things I ate at the C.N.E. in 2011. Including the Krispy Kreme Hamburger and Deep Fried Twix.

Things I ate at the C.N.E. in 2010. Including Deep Fried Butter and Taco In A Bag.

Things I Ate At The CNE In 2017

Things I ate at the C.N.E. in 2017.

Stunt food is officially a thing now at the Canadian National Exhibition. Every vendor seems to have at least one bizarre item on their menu — “charcoal” everything is particularly popular this year — which is a good thing because it’s looking like I’m going to be heading to the Ex on at least four occasions in the next two weeks and I’m not going to run out of options.

For round one I enlisted the help of multiple time Juno Award and Polaris Music Prize-nominated rapper and hilarious Instagram ninja D-Sisive to bear witness to the things I put in my mouth.

Here’s what I ate at the CNE on opening day Friday, August 18:

Bacon Nation Pig Mac. Maple smoked back bacon, regular bacon, cheese and lettuce with a hamburger patty on a bright red dyed bun to honour Canada 150. The red bun is a good gimmick visually, but this is really just a tricked out bacon burger. The fries were pretty good, though. 6.3/10.

Sprite. The oppressive ubiquity of Coca-Cola products at the Ex is something that’s bugged me forever. But I forgot to bring a water bottle and needed a container with a bottle cap. It tasted like Sprite. 5.3/10

Philthy Philly’s Strawberry Short Steak. People have surprisingly strong reactions to the idea of the Straw Berry Short Steak. It’s a philly cheesesteak sandwich slathered in strawberry syrup and whipped cream and topped with icing sugar. It’s not bad so much as it’s… not exactly what you want out of a steak sandwich. 6.1/10

Chloe’s Donut Ice Cream Sandwich. I’m a big fan of the midway classic, the waffle ice cream sandwich. As such, I tried to replicate it at Chloe’s booth. You can bam these up with different flavours and condiments, but I went traditional vanilla. Taste-wise, it’s fine. Where it falls apart, though, is when it literally starts to fall apart and the ice cream starts seeping through the donut, leaving your hands a sticky mess. When compared to the relative stability of the waffle sandwich, this just doesn’t stand up. 6/10

Interlude. Salad doesn’t appear to be a big draw at the Ex this year.

Fruit Punch Powerade. Sometimes you need a pick-me-up. This didn’t really “pick me up,” but it did stave off the worst of the dehydration. 5.3/10

Canadian Bacon Pickle Ball. This is a hot dog, stuffed in a pickle, wrapped in bacon, then deep fried. I had *really* high hopes for this, because I like both corndogs and deep fried pickles. It doesn’t work, though. There’s too much going on. 5.5/10

Deep Fried Chicken Foot. This is probably the most polarizing stunt food at the Ex this year. Either you’re completely freaked out and appalled by its mere existence or you’re, like, “Yeah, poor people have been eating chicken feet forever. No big deal.” “Eating” is a relative term here. There’s not much to eat. It’s basically bits of skin hidden under a layer of eggroll-y batter. It’s a pain in the ass to try chewing apart, so I gave up pretty quickly. As food, this is a 5/10. As a thing to freak out your friends on Facebook, 8.3/10.

Cake Shack Double Brownie. This was amazing. Two very good chocolate brownie slabs with a whomp of buttercream icing, some mini-peanut butter cups and a few crackles of Skor-like caramel bits. I was already super-full by the time I had this, and it’s huge on its own, so I didn’t enjoy it all that much. But it’s a beauty. 7.2/10

Bonus guest shot. Shoutouts to my eating companion for the day, rap and Instagram star, D-Sisive.

Round Two, September 1

Deep Fried Cheese Curds. We had sky-high expectations for these, having tried them the first time on a trip to Vegas and essentially seeing the face of god in our mouths. Alas, these didn’t quite match the meticulous Vegas fried curds. These were good, and the texture was appealing, but they were so heeeaavvvy. 7.3/10

Spaghetti Donut Balls’ Savory Fried Spaghetti Donut Ball. This was not really weird at all. Or particularly “donut-y.” It could probably work as a good trick to make a kid eat their spaghetti. 6/10

Barq’s Cream Soda. I like cream soda. This was cream soda. Also, it was clear coloured and not loaded up with no. 9 industrial red dye. 5.6/10

Interlude. Butter sculptures of Justin Trudeau with pandas and the viral capybara family.

Interlude. #DeadRacoonTO. I completely flipped out for this because I consider Dead Racoon the best manifestation of smart ass Toronto Twitter. Then I realized this year’s butter sculptures were entirely about viral Toronto animals and I got angry because IKEA monkey wasn’t there. Well, it turns out IKEA monkey *was* there and I somehow completely ignored it/it didn’t register with me. I’m blaming the butter sculptors because if their IKEA monkey was better sculpted I would have figured it out.

Farm To Fryer Mac and Curd Chimichanga. This was a little on the plain side, if entirely acceptable. It was ferociously thermodynamically hot, though, partially melting my plastic knife when I cut it in half. 6.6/10

Eative Very Berry Nitro Sorbet. The very beleagured woman at the counter had a whole speech ready to explain that the sorbet would *not* make your mouth puff out nitro smoke (that was their “Dragon’s Breath” offering). That said, somehow a dramatic nitro smoke effect is involved in the creation of the berry sorbet. I suppose it might be exciting to some people to witness. As sorbet, it was fine. 6.7/10

Chimney Stax Crazy 4 Caramel cone. These fancy ice cream cone thingees feature a baked chimney cone dipped in chocolate with crushed pretzel and caramel popcorn coating, a two-bite cinnamon bun and salted caramel sauce on soft serve. It’s a very, very tasty combination. It is also monstrously, unreasonably, borderline unnavigatably massive. Every bite you take is small act of surrendering one’s dignity to the inevitability of your chin or nose or, maybe, ear somehow inadvertently getting slimed by the cone. It takes you out of the experience and makes something that’s otherwise amazing a bit of a chore. 7.2/10

Rounds Three & Four, September 2-3

I went to concerts at the CNE on these days, so I got some more bonus food in.

Fran’s Southern Slang. Buttermilk chicken on a cinnamon sweet bun with coleslaw and chocolate sriracha sauce. Fran’s is usually super on-point straddling the line between tasty diner food and county fair novelty creations. The slang, however, didn’t quite sit right. The chicken was great — think KFC Big Crunch, but probably with 23% less mystery chemicals — and the slaw was fine. But the dumb cinnamon bun was unnecessary. 7/10

Fran’s Root Beer Float. Soft serve vanilla ice cream, root beer and a bit of whipped cream. You can’t really screw this up. 6.8/10

Corn Dog. A midway standard. See below in 2010 for a review.

Coca-Cola. It would be funnier if they put vaguely lurid lines on the bottles instead of “First Kiss.” Like, who wouldn’t be entertained by “Heavy Petting” or “Butt Squeeze” or “Leering Old Man”? That would make me love this product more. 5.1/10

Reese Flurry. They did NOT skimp on the “reese” part of this flurry. The well-ground peanut butter ‘n’ chocolate chunks filled the whole substantial cup and probably dinged me up about 2,000 calories. 7/10

Cowboy Taters. Deep fried taters topped with smoked brisket, southern cheese sauce, tomatoes, green onion, guacamole and sour cream. This was some tasty shit. About $5 too expensive, but still. In a sea of weird food combinations, this succeeded by being just a wee bit weird and having a wonderfully simple combination of things. 7.3/10

Additional reading:

Things I ate at the CNE in 2016. Including Bug Dog with Roasted Crickets and Deep Fried Butter Tarts.

Things I ate at the CNE in 2015. Including Corrado’s S&M Burger and Iron Skillet’s Frosted Flakes Chicken On A Stick.

Things I ate at the CNE in 2014. Including Fran’s Thanksgiving Turkey Waffle and Coco’s Fried Chicken Cocoa Chicken.

Things I ate at the C.N.E. in 2013. Including Nutella Jalapeno Poppers and the S’more Dog.

Things I ate at the C.N.E. in 2012. Including the Chocolate Eclair Dog and Bacon Nation Nutella BBBLT.

Things I ate at the C.N.E. in 2011. Including the Krispy Kreme Hamburger and Deep Fried Twix.

Things I ate at the C.N.E. in 2010. Including Deep Fried Butter and Taco In A Bag.

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Filed under Food, Recollections, The Misadventures Of

Tagged as Bacon, Bacon Nation Pig Mac, C.N.E. food, Canadian Bacon Pickle Ball, chimney stax, CNE, CNE 2017, CNE food, deadracoonto, deep fried cheese curds, Deep fried chicken feet, Donut Ice Cream Sandwich, donut spaghetti balls, eative nitro sorbet, farm to fryer curd chimichanga, Food, Fran's Southern Slang, Justin Trudeau panda, powerade, Root Beer Float, Sprite, Strawberry Short Steak, The Misadventures Of, Toronto capybaras

by Aaron Brophy | September 4, 2016 · 11:02 pm

Things I Ate At The C.N.E. In 2016

Things I ate at the C.N.E. in 2016

This year was a modest one for food adventuring at the Canadian National Exhibition.

Between work obligations and a different kind of adventure, I was only able to make it down to The Ex for one big session on September 4.

My spider-senses told me this wasn’t going to be a banner year for stunt food and, well, it wasn’t.

That said, I still knocked down some weird and crazy stuff. Here’s what I ate…

Fran’s Bacon Croissundae. This was a vanilla ice cream sundae with chocolate and strawberry sauce, stuck in the middle of a croissant, with a stick of bacon stuck in the middle of all of that. It was also my breakfast. The bacon was kinda unnecessary and this felt like a rare misstep for Fran’s. 6.1/10

Brewster’s Salt Water Taffy, Banana. Sarah had brought these home from a previous Ex trip. Although they’re pretty standard taffy strips, they’re from a genuine through-the-generations family recipe from an independent food purveyor, so points for that. 6/10

Raclette-Suisse. “Broiled Suisse raclette cheese scraped over a bed of crispy-fried potatoes and pickles.” For the simple pleasure of hot, melty cheese slathered on hash browns this was pretty great. 7.2/10

Canada Dry Cherry Vanilla Ginger Ale. If you’ve read any of my past C.N.E. food reports you’ll know all about my sadly failed attempts to escape the oppressive ubiquity of Coca-Cola products. It can’t be done, so instead I’ve chosen to embrace the adventure. Sometimes, like when you combine cherry and vanilla with your ginger ale, that adventure isn’t necessary. 5/10

Epic Burger’s The Churro Burger. It’s cheeseburger inbetween two churro “buns.” The burger itself was benign, but the combination of churro + burger wasn’t exactly harmonious. There was little structural integrity (it began to fall calamitously apart after two bites) and didn’t really make any sense. I ended up deconstructing the whole thing and eating the individual pieces separately.
Churro “bun”: 7/10
Churro “bun” with cheese stuck on it: 6.7/10
Hamburger patty: 6/10
The Churro Burger: 5/10
P.S. When I got my burger I was in line with a police officer who was buying the Krispy Kreme Hamburger (see my 2011 review). Cops really *do* like donuts!

Salted Caramel Fudge. Hitting up the fudge booth is one of my C.N.E. vices. The salted caramel may be the tastiest, texturally most awesome one I've tried yet. 8.3/10

Salted Caramel Fudge. Hitting up the fudge booth is one of my C.N.E. vices. The salted caramel may be the tastiest and texturally most awesome one I’ve tried yet. 8.3/10

R.I.P. Gene Wilder. I’m more of a Blazing Saddles person myself.

Championship Carrot. These are what championship carrots look like. The part I enjoy most about this is knowing that someone pulled those out of the ground and said to themselves, “These are fucking perfect. I’m totally going to enter them into the C.N.E. vegetable competition and win a goddamn ribbon.”

Butter Woes. Churning up the butter with my woes.

“Big Barrel Root Beer.” This was a bit of duplicitous fuckery. When I saw a couple of these “Big Barrel Root Beer” vendors around the grounds I was stoked. What was this strange new root beer? I had to have me some of this delicious new (not Coke brand) elixir. Then I bought some. It was just Barq’s Root Beer from a fountain tap hidden behind the barrel. Bullshit. 1/10

Eat My Bowl Roast Beef In A Bowl. It was just slightly gristly roast beef and gravy in a bread bowl. With some mild horseradish sauce. Meh. 6/10

Deep Fried Butter Tart. Deep frying things tends to make them more often in most cases. But when you deep fry a butter tart it mostly just erases the butter tart's identity and leaves some gooey sugar pie slurry in the middle of some fried dough. It doesn't suck, but it isn't magical either. 6/4/10

Deep Fried Butter Tart. Deep frying things tends to make them more awesome in most cases. But when you deep fry a butter tart it mostly just erases the butter tart’s identity and leaves some gooey sugar pie slurry in the middle of some fried dough. It doesn’t suck, but it isn’t magical either. 6.4/10

Fran’s Blueberry Pie Milkshake. One of this year’s premier stunt foods, the Fran’s Blueberry Pie Milkshake featured a slice of real blueberry pie blended with real ice cream along with whip cream, rainbow sprinkles, Smarties, cotton candy, a chocolate wafer and an actual piece of blueberry pie on top of it. At no point did this thing suck — the pie was good, the wafer was fun and the actual shake was really good. It felt more like a mining expedition than a taste journey, though. First you had to deal with the cotton candy, then you had to navigate the cream ‘n’ sprinkle outer rim (getting sprinkles ALL over yourself). After that you had to break through the blueberry pie layer, until finally you were able to unlock the murky blue shake core. It was tasty, but it was also a chore. 7.1/10

Cookie Dough Me Deep Fried Peanut Butter Cup. Cookie Dough Me’s set-up is impressively locked down. They’ve already got piles of deep fried things — Oreos, cookie dough bits, peanut butter cups — on the ready in hot trays, looking to all the world like a series of trays of Chinese chicken balls. Except, instead of micro-squares of chicken surrounded by tasty batter, these have chocolate goodness. The peanut butter cup was surprisingly delicate, all things considered. Its butter cuppiness did, however, get diminished somewhat by the deep frying. 7/10

Bug Bistro Bug Dog. An all-beef frank blended with cricket protein and covered in Red Hot, lime slaw and mustard-roasted crickets. Before I started I picked off the roasted crickets that were the most “leggy.” I’d heard that the legs get caught in your teeth and that was the level of gross I wasn’t prepared to deal with. The hot dog itself was a bit greasy, but I couldn’t tell whether that was the result of reckless prep or the dog being greasy. And with the sly trick of putting crunchy coleslaw on the dog along with the roasted crickets it completely disguises any textural creep outs you might get from eating bugs. Basically, the hot dog tasted like a hot dog. And if you gave it to someone at a barbecue without it being covered in roasted crickets they’d probably have no idea they were eating a part-beef, part-bug protein wiener. 7/10

Additional reading:
Things I ate at the CNE in 2015. Including Corrado’s S&M Burger and Iron Skillet’s Frosted Flakes Chicken On A Stick.

Things I ate at the CNE in 2014. Including Fran’s Thanksgiving Turkey Waffle and Coco’s Fried Chicken Cocoa Chicken.

Things I ate at the C.N.E. in 2013. Including Nutella Jalapeno Poppers and the S’more Dog.

Things I ate at the C.N.E. in 2012. Including the Chocolate Eclair Dog and Bacon Nation Nutella BBBLT.

Things I ate at the C.N.E. in 2011. Including the Krispy Kreme Hamburger and Deep Fried Twix.

Things I ate at the C.N.E. in 2010. Including Deep Fried Butter and Taco In A Bag.

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Tagged as Barq's Root Beer, Brewster's Salt Water Taffy, Bug Bistro bug dog, Canada Dry Ginger Ale, Canadian National Exhibition, Canadian National Exhibition 2016, CNE, CNE 2016, deep fried butter tart, deep fried peanut butter cup, Epic Burgers, Food, Fran's Bacon Croissundae, Fran's blueberry pie milkshake, Raclette-Suisse, salted caramel fudge, The Churro Burger, The Misadventures Of

by Aaron Brophy | August 29, 2015 · 11:02 am

Things I Ate At The C.N.E. In 2015

CNE food 2015

Summer’s almost gone and that means one thing — the Canadian National Exhibition has started in Toronto.

All those discount merchandisers and over-the-hill musical acts are fine, but the real draw in Risky Fuel quarters are the many, many, many weird, wild and wonderful food vendors displaying their wares in the Food Building and in the C.N.E.’s midway.

Once again we tackled some of the most peculiar foods the Ex had on offer, experiencing Jamaican beef patties as a hamburger bun substitutes, the combination of chicken and Frosted Flakes and a whole lot more.

Read below to find out what our eating adventures were like…

Round one, August 21

Bub's Burger's Bad Boy. Spicy cheese, beef burger patty, honey garlic fried chicken filet, pepperjack cheese, wasabi cucumber, hickory stix, tomato sriracha mayo and buttermilk coleslaw all between two Jamaican beef patties.

Bub’s Burger’s Bad Boy. This is this year’s alpha stunt food — spicy cheese beef burger patty, honey garlic fried chicken filet, pepperjack cheese, wasabi cucumber, hickory sticks, tomato sriracha mayo and buttermilk coleslaw all between two Jamaican beef patties instead of traditional burger buns. For such an obvious monstrosity it’s actually… not bad. The honey garlic adds a nice tang, the chicken’s done right and the hickory sticks are a fun dining surprise. What’s wrong with the whole package, however, is its complete, utter and total disregard for structural integrity. There’s a reason why there’s a giant spear through the whole burger, after all. And as anyone who’s read my past CNE reports knows, structural integrity is a big deal. Because without it you end up with mess. And mess means my hands get dirty. And when my hands get dirty with food I get a little bit insane. Which happened as I paced through the Ex midway holding both my hands in the air desperate to find a washroom in which to wash them. 7.1/10

Chicken Waffle On A Stick. Dry chicken surrounded by a coating of what seemed similar to the batter used in making fortune cookies. The sauce options — hot sauce, table syrup, and something I can’t remember — were not excellent, so I chose the syrup. I chose wrong. This was an entirely unpleasant food experience. 4.6/10

Deep Fried Red Velvet Oreos. Another of the marquee stunt foods this year, some stall in the Food Building had the smart idea to batter Oreos in a red velvet style and sell less of them (three) for more money than you can buy regular deep fried Oreos (five) at the stands in the midway. Taste-wise they were fine for deep fryer junk food, but I can’t in good conscience recommend them when there’s a virtually identical product with better value available 100 metres away. 6/10

Barq’s Root Beer with Vanilla. I’ve given up on trying to avoid the long tentacles of the Coca-Cola/CNE Industrial Complex and decided to embrace that funky machine they have that creates like a thousand different flavour combinations. I’ve had the root beer + vanilla before. 5/10

Pickle Pete’s Deep Fried Cheesecake. Another of the dazzler new food entries this year, the deep fried cheesecake combined two of my favourite things: 1) cheesecake, and 2) deep fried-ness. The result was something firmly on the tasty side of things, where the result ends up being vaguely cannoli-ish. It’s solidly good and as a midway deep fry vendor Pickle Pete’s is on point. 7.3/10

Pickle Pete’s Deep Fried Green Beans. Green beans are already right up there on the tasty vegetable scale, but batter and deep frying them then serving them with a chipotle mayo concoction bams them up even higher. These were solidly alright and if I was given the option of “deep fried green beans” or “french fries” as my side at a restaurant, I’d very likely take the beans. There was, however, one hitch to eating these: I had them immediately after eating the deep fried cheesecake, which was a very unfair thing to do to my tastebuds. 6.3/10

Round two, August 25

99 Cent Spaghetti. SWERVE! Just when you thought I was only all about the hyper-new stunt foods I go and try the 99 cent spaghetti from the classic 99 Cent Primo Spaghetti booth. It was my first time ever trying the buck-for-pasta deal (thoroughly acceptable for what it was, btw) and what I found most fascinating was the genius way the booth operates. Sure, you can get spaghetti for 99 cents, but Parmesan cheese is an extra 75 cents, meatballs $1.75, and if you don’t want the small cup of ‘getti, upsizing is $1.89. And when you see other people getting those things you want them, too. It’s classic get them through the door, then get them with the extras. I did not upsize, though, because I am, at my core, a frugal person. 5.5/10

Bentley’s Deep Fried Poutine Balls. Now this is a brilliant idea. Encase a cheese curd in a ball of mashed potato, deep fry said potato curd ball, then slather with gravy and more cheese curd. It’s a totally effective twist on what’s already one of the greatest foods in the known universe. 6.8/10

Corrado’s S&M Burger. Another one of the marquee stunt foods this year, this one’s a meatball burger on a toasted garlic bun with spicy Havarti cheese, a deep-fried spaghetti patty, hot peppers and tomato sauce. The novelty to this whole thing is the deep-fried spaghetti patty. Its gimmick is the reason why they can charge $14 for the very coyly named S&M burger, but it’s also the most superfluous, useless item on the sandwich, a tasteless lump of… whatever. Compounding my irritation with the S&M was the messy food adventure I had with this one. See, I *knew* this was going to be a super-messy food, and not wanting to have a repeat of the Bad Boy burger episode, I had the server pre-cut the sandwich in half on top of giving me an empty french fry container and utensils. I figured after unpacking and taking a photo of the S&M I’d just transfer it from its packaging into the fry receptacle and knife ‘n’ fork it. Right at the moment I was about to do this, like a message sent straight from the food gods, a brisk wind promptly blew my fry container (and the utensils I had resting in it) off the table into a puddle-y refuse pile. I was left with no defense from the finger-staining, tectonic instability of this mutant. It was not pleasant. Save yourself the stunt and go for the straight meatball sandwich. 5.9/10

Iron Skillet’s Frosted Flakes Chicken On A Stick. Holy shit was this ever grrrrreeaat. You wouldn’t think a gimmick like a Frosted Flakes batter on chicken pieces, on a stick would work so well, but it did. The Flakes added both a textural crunch and just the right level of sweet and the chicken chunks themselves were juicy and delicious. It was basically like eating a radically bammed up souvlaki skewer where Popeye’s chicken engineers have figure out how to capture Tony the Tiger’s soul. 8/10

Fran’s PB&J Milkshake. Fran’s CNE food game has been tight since they took over a booth at the Ex for the first time last year. The latest in a series of new items for this year is the PB+J milkshake. I had my doubts — PB&J is more of a Sarah thing — but I was a quick convert one sip in. The consistency is right, the flavour is right and the whole package, complete with its whip cream topping and strawberry syrup drizzle, works very well. 7.4/10

Canada Dry Ginger Ale with Lime. Most of the time when we try this machine whatever the main pop is, that’s what it tastes like. So if you order root beer with a splash of vanilla it’s pretty much root beer. And if you get any does of vanilla in there it’s bonus. That’s not how things went when we decided to lime up some ginger ale. You could taste the lime. And if that’s what you were hoping for out of the experience, well, small victory then. 5.3/10

Round three, September 3
* I made an impromptu third visit to the Ex with this friends this day and (full confession) kinda sampled bits of their food as a cheat, including another pass at the still-awesome Fran’s Thanksgiving Turkey Waffle. Here are the new things I tackled:

Swiss Waffle’s & Crepes’ Strawberries and Soft Serve On A Deep Fried Waffle. Yet another of these classic Ex treats, the Swiss Waffle people proudly state they’ve been around since 1968. This, the deep fried waffle-y cruller thing with soft serve vanilla ice cream and strawberries, was simple in its elegance, but also way awesome. At under $5 it also represents a solid value as far as midway treats go. 7/10

Far East Taco’s Smore Bao. Marshmallow, hazelnut, chocolate, Graham cracker crumbs, sweet milk cream. This tastes *exactly* like a Wagon Wheel. 6.1/10

Just Cone It Grilled Chicken Cone. Chicken, red peppers, onions and cheese. This was very similar to the pizza cones of the Mad Italian (do a Risky Fuel search) and indeed it might even be the same people. This specific cone, however, lacked anything… special. No sauce, no seasoning, nothing to elevate it beyond, “Hey, it’s stuff in a doughy cone.” Which is low novelty in a food building full of stunt edibles. 5.5/10

Fran’s Deep Fried Rice Pudding Balls. I stole one of these babies from my friend BlanchBot. Having no interest in rice pudding in general, I had low expectations for what deep frying said pudding might do to improve things. And yet, it did. By ballifying the pudding it adds a welcome new textural layer to the whole experience. Throwing in a lemon custard dip also bams things up a notch. Improbably, this one’s a winner. 6.8/10

Fanta Orange Soda. Because I have nostalgic association with the “Fanta” brand. 5/10

Additional reading:

Things I ate at the CNE in 2016. Bug Bistro’s Bug Dog and Fran’s Blueberry Milkshake with a slice of real blueberry pie.

Things I ate at the CNE in 2014. Including Fran’s Thanksgiving Turkey Waffle and Coco’s Fried Chicken Cocoa Chicken.

Things I ate at the C.N.E. in 2013. Including Nutella Jalapeno Poppers and the S’more Dog.

Things I ate at the C.N.E. in 2012. Including the Chocolate Eclair Dog and Bacon Nation Nutella BBBLT.

Things I ate at the C.N.E. in 2011. Including the Krispy Kreme Hamburger and Deep Fried Twix.

Things I ate at the C.N.E. in 2010. Including Deep Fried Butter and Taco In A Bag.

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Filed under Food, Recollections

Tagged as 2015 Canadian National Exhibition, bubs burger bad boy, C.N.E., C.N.E. 2015, C.N.E. food, Canadian National Exhibition, chicken waffle on a sticke, CNE, CNE 2015, CNE food, deep fried cheesecake, deep fried oreos, deep fried poutine balls, deep fried rice pudding, Food, Fran's, frosted flakes chicken, grilled chicken cone, PBJ milkshake, Recollections, red velvet oreos, S&M burger, smore bao

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