3.--PNE Food

The best lemonade is in Marketplace.

For most of my life the PNE has been an integral part of family tradition. Every year, rain or shine, we went. Last year we decided not to go because the Pacific National Exhibition is just getting too expensive. If you decide to park in the lot nearby it costs you nearly thirty bucks. And, lets face it, we as a family are changing too. We're getting older, and hours and hours of walking has a tendency to tire us out and make us cranky.

But this year we have decided to attend. Part of the reason is that my youngest brother broke a "miracle product" that I bought at the PNE some years before (a rubberized broom that has a million uses), and I want to go and see if by some extraordinairy good timing they have decided to sell them once again. I also need to get some incredible miracle glue that bonds everything. I bought it a couple of years ago then lent it to someone and never got it back.

The deal-maker, however, is the food. I started this blog a couple of weeks ago and although I have a million ideas for posts it occurred to me that PNE food would make a great entry, and for those of you who have discovered this blog it only seemed fair (heh-heh; PNE, fair; get it--oh, never mind, if I have to explain it, it isn't funny) to go on opening day so you might have time to go and try the food itself. I am typing this in the morning before we leave; I want to try the two new food booths they have--Yumza, a gourmet pizza place that makes in-house pizza, and I also want to try Colossal Cones, a tortilla cone with coleslaw, your choice of chicken, shrimp or falafel and then "topped with a zesty sauce", as the PNE advertising booklet says. My brother just has to try the Double Dog Dare Ya, a two-foot-long hotdog from Crazy Dogs, and my brother-in-law really wants to check out the BBQ ribs competition.

OK--the real capper is the Star Trek exhibition. That was what did it for me and made me want to go this year.

But the food blog benefits! More this evening, when I return.

Yumza

The Aussie

Last night I was too exhausted to finish this particular entry, so it is now Sunday morning.  Moving on.  The first place we checked out was Yumza, located down the main thoroughfare just past the livestock barns if you are travelling toward Playland. We were disappointed to discover that it only has four kinds of pizza--pepperoni, vegetarian, three-cheese and "Aussie"--but the last one caught my attention because of its name. What toppings could "Aussie" possibly have? Kangaroo meat? Some kind of weird koala sauce? Turns out I was in for another disappointment--it consists of mozzarella, bacon bits and a very generic bbq sauce. If they had made their own sauce, or even taken a generic one and added some ingredients that made it their own, They would have elevated it to something special and I would have readily paid the thirty-three bucks for a whole pizza. At six bucks a slice I expected better. On the up side, the pizza dough was lovely--nice and bready without being too thick or undercooked, and a very appealing crispness to the bottom of the dough. Plus, the bacon bits on mine were done to perfection--crispy without being hard. They're pretty small bits so that is quite an accomplishment. My nephew had the pepperoni and pronounced it really good--"as good as Chucky Cheese". (He's ten and a picky eater, so that's high praise.)



The Pepperogi

The next place we checked out was Crazy Dogs, in pretty much the same area as Yumza. There is another Crazy Dogs stand up near Marketplace near the Beer Garden, but it doesn't have a couple of the hotdogs you can get at the one down by Yumza, most notably the Pepperogi, which is a grilled pretzel bun, all-beef weiner, 6 perogies, topped with grilled onions, a drizzle of sour cream, 8-10 slices of pepperoni and a sprinkle of green onions. At eleven bucks it's pleasantly filling. My sister, who ordered it, said when you bite into the bun along with a perogi it tastes kind of bland because it's a starch within a starch, but otherwise, she said, it tastes really good. My brother, who wanted to try the Double Dare Ya (a two-foot long monstrosity topped with chili, grilled onions and peppers, cheese sauce and bacon bits for twenty-five dollars at Crazy Dogs), opted instead for The Titanic from The Shrimp Boat, located just back of the Westjet Concert Stage (see picture below).  At a horrifying thirty-three dollars, the food, while good, is not worth the money you pay, made to look large as it does by a huge pile of potato chips beneath the real food that must have cost the owner a dollar to prepare, and filled out on either side by over-dressed coleslaw which must have run them another fifty cents to a dollar of overhead cost.


The Titanic--a lovely liner of a meal
 capsized and sunk by the
iceberg of outrageous price

Another disappointment (oh dear) was the Chinatown stand. My brother-in-law usually orders from this stand because he likes the food, but this time Combo A--his regular choice--was bland, and the chow mein dry as well. He did say the spareribs were good, but since we ordered about a half hour after the fair opened and there was no lineup, the whole thing should have been fresh and hot; it wasn't.

After a massive search for Colossal Cones we finally located it in Playland near the BreakDance ride. We opted not to buy one because quite frankly the cones, made from a tortilla, didn't look all that colossal and, jaded by the previous food experiences of the day, made us suspect that it was filled mostly with coleslaw and topped by not much chicken, shrimp or falafel, or zesty sauce. We could be wrong, though; and if we are we are apologize for our cynical outlook. For all we know it is a cone of tortilla deliciousness wrapped around a cornucopia of flavor. But we weren't willing to spend another seven dollars to find out. And the cone part did look small (to us) for the price--we watched them make one for another customer.

The ribs competition would have had us fork out a ton of money if we had wanted to try them all to vote between all the rib stands involved, though it does have the advantage of having all of them located together.

Having said all that, I must say we had a great time at the fair. The Star Trek exhibit is amazing for Trekkers (-ies) and the rest of the place is just plain fun. And I did find (and buy) the brooms and glue I wanted. So go to the PNE.

All you need is gouts of money.