As we do every year, the kids and I went to the PNE. And of course my primary purpose is to eat all the PNE food!
The first food item we tried at the PNE was the “blooming onion”. We ordered it with “the works”. A deep fried onion loaded with melted cheese, bacon bits, and green onions. It was delicious.
I would have liked to have a fork to eat the onion with because it did get messy when pulling it apart with our fingers. Both kids gave the blooming onion their stamp of approval. As did I!
The next PNE food at the fair that we tried were the “potato tornado”. Or the “twisted potato”. It depends which PNE food vendor you go to. One is twisted, the other is the tornado. We happened to be at the “Twisted Potato” booth when we got ours.
The first one was the “Cowboy” twisted potato. Loaded up with melted cheese (there’s a theme of melted cheese developing here), salsa, sour cream, and green onions. It was spectacular.
However, one of my kids wasn’t interested in all that salsa and stuff so she got a more traditional one with the sour cream and onion powdered flavour on it. I have to admit, it was freaking awesome. It hit all the salty flavour notes. Loved it.
Next up – poutine.
Every one of the PNE food vendors seemed to have some type of poutine on their menu. Some with more success than others.
The one we got was served at approximately A MILLION DEGREES HOT. Not as much fun as one might think it would be. It was okay. If I go to the PNE again – I guess I do have all weekend to try more PNE food, I would try the poutine from the barbecue joints like Prairie Barbecue. I am just going to guess that they would do better than the place we went to.
Don’t get me wrong, it was okay, just WAY TOO HOT. And just okay.
My daughter saw The Plant Butcher and wanted to try their veggie smashburger. I wanted to go the classic Jimmy’s Lunch and get their classic burger loaded with fried onions, bacon, cheese, and pure wholesome PNE food goodness.
Nope. We went to The Plant Butcher. And I have to admit, I really wanted to like the veggie smashburger but it just did not work for me. The smashburger veggie patty was good. But then they serve it on a big bun that is cold. And dry. Not nearly enough dressing on the bun.
Seriously? Drop that bun on the flattop, warm it up and get it at least a bit greasy and toasty.
The addition of a slice of cold cheese (I think it was veggie cheese) onto the burger did nothing to improve the burger. My advice – add some of that heat from the poutine place to the veggie burgers.
My kid liked it. I was quite disappointed with this squandered opportunity to show people that veggie burgers can be awesome.
You may have heard that there was controversy about the mini donut vendors.
Apparently the “original” mini donut people were not invited to the PNE this year and there was a rumour that – imagine the horror – there would BE NO MINI DONUTS!!
Alas. There were mini donuts. The original style of mini donuts in a bag with sugar and cinnamon. Yummy. Perfect PNE food.
They also had, like nearly every other PNE food vendor who was not selling poutine, deep fried Oreos or other amazing sweets like Twix or other candy bars that were deep fried into heavenly deliciousness.
We could have had the red velvet donuts but we settled on stuffed and deep fried Oreos with a vanilla glaze. Yeah, they were sweet. But hey, you only go to the PNE once or twice a year! Indulge.
I have to confess, just before we were leaving the PNE I started to feel a little peckish. As I said, there were many vendors selling mini donuts and deep fried Oreos so we stopped and got ANOTHER set of Oreos.
I misunderstood the ordering instructions and asked for TWO servings of this PNE food. I did not realize that each serving was FOUR stuffed and deep fried cookies. It was a lot of sweetness. A LOT. But it was delicious so I pushed through. I hate to see food go to waste…
On our way out of the PNE I saw the soft serve ice cream place. Unfortunately this was not the one selling Mac and Cheese flavoured soft serve ice cream – I would have loved to try that!
They did have the pineapple flavour soft serve which was yummy goodness.
The food that many people were talking about – the Korean Squid Ink Corndog. Sorry, I was just too stuffed with so many other PNE food items that I simply could not eat one of these. And you know, they actually do not look all that appealing. To be honest, no courdog looks very appetizing but, if I return to the PNE, I MIGHT try one.
All things considered, there were far more hits than fails in the PNE food this year. I didn’t try anything outrageous, but I had the opportunity to get all the classic PNE food items that one expects to. Until next year…unless my kids beg me enough to go again this weekend!