2026 CNE Featured Foods Reviews
A walk-through of the Canadian National Exhibition’s headline foods — what worked, what flopped, and where the flavour opportunities are.
Reviewed by Merissa Lombardo & Allyson Koid
The walk-through at a glance
What we were looking for: novelty that actually tastes good, flavour systems we can build ingredients around, and the gap between a great idea and a poor execution.
Dill Pickle
Pickle stayed the CNE’s signature novelty flavour — pushed this year from savoury snacks into dessert and coffee.
Peggrolls — Dill Pickle Eggrolls
Mr. Pickle — Dill Pickle Cheesecake Pop
Greekery Café — Pickle Coffee
Dill Pickle Eggrolls
Crispy exterior, creamy dill and potato interior — an interesting take on an eggroll. Served with spicy or regular sour cream. Potato and pickle are a match made in heaven.
Chopped pastrami for salt, flavour and texture — and a Spicy Dill Pickle Alfredo Ramen as the next expression.
Chopped pastrami for salt, flavour and texture — and a Spicy Dill Pickle Alfredo Ramen as the next expression.
Dill Pickle Cheesecake Pop
Thick, creamy, sweet, tangy. A classic cheesecake slice coated in green white chocolate and rolled in crushed dill pickle chips — the chocolate was far too sweet for the large pickle crumbs.
The cheesecake and white chocolate were way too sweet and overpowered the dill pickle chips.
Use a savoury, slightly salty adhesion for the crumb and build dill into the cheesecake base — think dill pickle Boursin on a stick.
Pickle Coffee
Smooth, subtle, dill coffee. Almost all the bitterness is gone, distracted away by a garlic-dill note. A surprising combination that works.
Tastes like an iced latte with dill weed and garlic, but lacking a pickle’s acidity — it cuts the coffee’s bitterness rather than clashing.
A pickle-back mocktail with pickle juice as the base, or a pickle electrolyte energy drink that lets the acidity shine.
Sweet & Savory
The biggest cluster of the fair: sweet formats carrying savoury, smoky and spicy payloads — with mixed execution.
Caf-eh TO — Szechuan Sizzle
Bacon Nation — Root Beer Candied Bacon
Alijandro’s Kitchen — Sweet Corn & Wasabi Lemonade
Booster Juice — KD Smoothie
Pizza Pizza — S’mores Deep Fried Slice
Bacon Coffee — Smoked Bacon Coffee
Szechuan Sizzle
Vanilla ice cream with peanuts and chili oil — a major sensory experience that runs from heat, to crunch, to a smooth sweet finish.
The chili oil’s heat is quickly cooled by creamy vanilla; peanuts add crunch and the flavours surprisingly complement each other.
Balance the heat, add sweet sprinkles for a bigger crunch and swicy hit, and use cilantro oil for freshness and contrast.
Root Beer Candied Bacon
Smoky and sweet, but lacking root beer — no vanilla, caramel, wintergreen, molasses or anise. A good eat if you love bacon.
Sweet sticky side bacon with almost undetectable root beer. Cracked black pepper overpowered and masked it further — not worth $12 for three thin slices.
Play with thickness — one large charred piece, or a lechon-style roll with pesto-maple. Sprinkle root beer-infused brown sugar so the flavour isn't lost.
Sweet Corn & Wasabi Lemonade
Where is the Wasabi? Instead, a creamy, buttery, sour, sweet lemonade — really refreshing.
A sweet-and-salty lemonade reminiscent of Korean naengmyeon broth. The combo works, but there’s no nose-clearing wasabi pungency.
Kick it up a notch and add a wasabi salted rim so the heat comes through.
KD Smoothie
Nostalgic, adventurous and a little weird. You taste exactly what you expect — classic KD cheese powder. This one is a skip.
The first sip tastes like mango before the cheese powder overpowers your taste buds until it feels like drinking cold cheese sauce.
Keep drinkable sweet-savoury dairy but go licorice or anise forward — or avocado and bean. A different CPG partner would land better.
S'mores Deep Fried Slice
Wild and absurd — a pizza slice with a battered graham cracker crust, marshmallow and chocolate sauce. Seemed double deep fried; this one made my taste buds confused.
The graham crust was hard and dry against doughy pizza. The s’mores-andcheese combination was not overly offensive.
Encase the s'mores filling inside the crumb and fry it — melty bite-sized pockets of marshmallow and bitter dark chocolate, with a lighter batter.
Smoked Bacon Coffee
Very intense, very smoky. The bacon brings out even more of the bitter notes in the coffee — powerful and strong.
The sweet and salty flavour worked, but the smoke was overpowering and reminiscent of burnt coffee.
Move the idea into a different application like an espresso-rubbed honey ham. Or keeping with coffee: try a hot latte built on bacon fat like a butter coffee.
Fusion Foods
Mash-ups drove the biggest highs and lows of the fair — the winners kept one cuisine’s format intact instead of diluting both.
Supreme Pierogi — Jamaican Patty Pierogi
Smash City — Cheeseburger Dumplings
Rick’s Good Eats — Footlong Butter Chicken Taquitos
Jerk Dogs — Cotton Candy Waffleicious
Lucky Chicken — Blue Takis Chicken Finger
Los Vietnamita Taquerita — Ramen Taco
Jamaican Patty Pierogi
Fun-sized beef bites, but not very reminiscent of the named pierogi.
Plenty of potential, let down by a dry filling and tough dough.
Commit to one identity — make the dough look and taste like a Jamaican patty, or keep it traditional pierogi with a saucier filling.
Cheeseburger Dumplings
Big Mac meets steam dumpling. Originally advertised as a smashburger dumpling — the pivot makes sense, since smashburger crispiness is lost in this application.
All the flavours of a cheeseburger in one bite; satisfies the burger craving without the mess.
Cheeseburger is a truly universal flavour — tacos, chips, meal helpers. Add a crispy lace dumpling skirt for a smash-style textural element.
Footlong Butter Chicken Taquitos
Prepare for a footlong of great flavour, walk-and-eat ready — oozing with cheese, minced chicken, sauce and rice.
The perfect fair food: deep-fried, foot-long, cheesy butter chicken goodness.
More pickled jalapeños for brightness, served with a raita dipping sauce.
Cotton Candy Waffleicious
A jerk-flavoured hot dog in a waffle with pepper sauce, cotton candy and shaved coconut. The dog itself was very good and jerk-forward, but it clashed with the cotton candy and coconut.
Good sweet-and-salty balance, but the coconut tasted out of place. The jerk dog was the highlight — it doesn’t taste as bad as it looks.
Keep the jerk profile and encrust a battered dog in toasted coconut, coconut-shrimp style, with spicy mango cotton candy.
Blue Takis Chicken Finger
Juicy, crunchy, tangy, intense and BLUE. A ranch dip brings the flavour back down to earth.
The blue Takis add sharp tang and spice, but the tender underneath lacks flavour — a full portion would stain your tongue blue.
Coat the whole tender for full coverage and brine or season the meat with chili and lime so the flavour carries throughout.
Ramen Taco
Bring a knife and fork. The Buldak noodle shell was flimsy and soggy, and the chicken tender, kimchi and unicorn hot sauce faded into the background.
The picture showed a lot of potential but the execution was poor — soggy noodles, undetectable cotton candy, and impossible to pick up like a taco.
Fry the ramen and coat the chicken in it, serve in a tortilla for edibility, and switch to a brighter sauce like chimichurri.
The Full Scorecard
Every featured item, scored out of 10 by both reviewers — plus the highs, the lows, and the patterns worth building on.
Ratings scorecard — all 15 items
| Theme | Vendor | Item | Merissa | Allyson | Avg |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dill Pickle | Pegrolls | Dill Pickle Eggrolls | 7 | 7 | 7.0 |
| Dill Pickle | Mr. Pickle | Dill Pickle Cheesecake Pop | 2 | 3 | 2.5 |
| Dill Pickle | Greekery Café | Pickle Coffee | 5 | 5 | 5.0 |
| Sweet & Savory | Caf-eh TO | Szechuan Sizzle | 8 | 7.5 | 7.8 |
| Sweet & Savory | Bacon Nation | Root Beer Candied Bacon | 6 | 5 | 5.5 |
| Sweet & Savory | Alijandro's Kitchen | Sweet Corn & Wasabi Lemonade | 5 | 6 | 5.5 |
| Sweet & Savory | Booster Juice | KD Smoothie | 1 | 1 | 1.0 |
| Sweet & Savory | Pizza Pizza | S'mores Deep Fried Slice | 3 | 4 | 3.5 |
| Sweet & Savory | Bacon Coffee | Smoked Bacon Coffee | 3 | 3 | 3.0 |
| Fusion Foods | Supreme Pierogi | Jamaican Patty Pierogi | 5 | 4 | 4.5 |
| Fusion Foods | Smash City | Cheeseburger Dumplings | 9 | 8.5 | 8.8 |
| Fusion Foods | Rick's Good Eats | Footlong Butter Chicken Taquitos | 8.5 | 9 | 8.8 |
| Fusion Foods | Jerk Dogs | Cotton Candy Waffleicious | 6 | 6 | 6.0 |
| Fusion Foods | Lucky Chicken | Blue Takis Chicken Finger | 7 | 6.5 | 6.8 |
| Fusion Foods | Los Vietnamita Taquerita | Ramen Taco | 3.5 | 3 | 3.3 |
Top picks and Hard Passes
What the ratings tell us
Advertising trend: AI-generated imagery
The most obvious difference at the CNE this year had nothing to do with food. Almost every vendor advertised with AI-generated images and posters — and the styles were so similar that some were nearidentical in appearance, colour and tone.
The risk: when every stand looks the same, the product photo stops selling the product. Real texture and honest plating become the differentiator.
Where we go from here
- Build around swicy and smoke-forward dairy — the sensory contrast items scored highest.
- Develop savoury dessert systems: dill, garlic and pepper into sweet bases done with balance.
- Solve texture: coatings and crumbs that hold under fryer and hold-time conditions.
- Prototype the fixes we called out — pastrami eggroll, coconutcrusted jerk dog, fried-ramen coating.
- Take a real-photography position on trend imagery while competitors converge on AI.
Merissa Lombardo · Technical Account Manager · 2026 CNE walk-through
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