PNE Food – Venturing Outside the Comfort Zone

There’s still time to catch the fun at the PNE (lots of great bands still to play too!) and there’s definitely some PNE Food you’ll not want to miss, and perhaps some that you may find just a wee bit iffy. Michael had work off last Wednesday, and luckily it coincided with this year’s media food tour, so we both headed to the fair, ensuring went  came hungry.

First up there was Chicky’s Chicken and their Chicken Feet. I’ve tried chicken feet during dim sum was not really all that keen, but these were indeed novel as they were served on a stick, and there’s always the fun of chasing someone with the chicken foot.

Next we ventured to Super Footlong and sampled their Double Bacon Mac N’ Cheese Hotdog. It’s a crazy foot-long version, but the mac n’ cheese was a far too overcooked and cheese sauce rather flavourless, although there were some fair-goer’s keenly tucking into this, I thought of many ways to improve this. Kraft dinner even came to mind.

The taco ice cream cone from Steve O’s Public House is a truck I would revisit. The ice cream is rolled up  and mixed with topping such a Oreos, Skor bar or strawberries and then served up in a taco topped with whipped cream. Steve O’s also serves deep fried chocolate bars, that I still have never tried, deep fried oreos and deep fried cheesecake, the latter sounding rather appealing.

Dim Sum Express in onsite and they had a selection of dumplings and a pork bun that, while wouldn’t win an award at the Chinese Restaurant awards, were tasty little morsels that did make me wish for a pot of tea and a few more samples.

If you’ve been following food trends, eating insects for protein is on the up and at the Gourmet Burgers food truck crickets were served atop the fries in a poutine and in the burger. Crunchy and nutty is how I’d describe them, and the burgers would be something I’d crunch on again.

I’d recently had a funnel cake at Sea World, and that was my first one. It was topped with icing sugar and ice cream and was actually quite tasty.  At the PNE they are serving up a gravy and curd topped funnel cake, which is novel, and not as unappealing as I though it would be, but I’d rather have the sweet version. It’s all about the shock value sometimes though, isn’t it?

Now Beavertails were a novelty for me (I know I live in a cave) and I really could have eaten a great deal more of these. The banana and nutella version was very moreish and I had to step away before I went into a massive sugar-high. Oh that PNE Food!

Fortunately there was fish and chips on the last stop, so I actually got a bit of protein for my breakfast/lunch. The Double Deck Diner is housed in an actual double decker bus and the Fish and Chips here had a nice crunchy batter and were tender and flaky inside. We jumped up top and stayed a while! The chips were equally good.

After this roaming feast we had a bit of time to check out some of the fair. A walk through the farm animals, the paper couture collection, hockey hall of fame and a quick wander through the marketplace were all we had time for.

We escaped the show with minimal damage, a couple bottles of miracle shoe polish and a bit of a tummy ache.