The CNE is back, and we want you to help decide which classic CNE treat reigns supreme.
Starting today, we’re putting eight beloved CNE eats head-to-head in a March Madness-style bracket. You’ll vote, we’ll whittle the field from eight to four to two, and later in the week, we’ll crown the ultimate CNE treat.
But before we get to the voting, let’s take a step back.
Sure, a funnel cake and deep-fried butter balls seem tame now. These days, the CNE’s food scene is all about the latest outrageous creation — adding colours that don’t exist in nature or combining flavours that would send a Victorian child into shock. By now, your Instagram feeds are probably already filling up with this year’s new contenders for viral status.
But those wild creations have the CNE classics to thank.
Some of these treats have been around for decades, long before Instagram gave us a reason to photograph our food. What started as midway novelty has, in some cases, become something people genuinely look forward to eating every year.
So now it’s time to settle the debate.
Voting for the first round opens Monday at 10 a.m. and runs until 11 a.m. Tuesday. The winners will be announced at noon, when the next round begins. Check back every day to see whether your favourite survives.
And in the meantime, sound off in the comments: What’s the ultimate classic CNE treat — and why?
Funnel Cake vs Colossal Onion: Which fried and sharable treat on a plate is your favourite?
1) The funnel cake
The immediately recognizable plate of deep-fried dough, standing reminscent of a pile of spaghetti and topped with a big scoop of ice cream and whipped cream, is the ideal warm-and-cool dessert to share with friends. But the funnel cake is also the ultimate blank canvas for CNE food experimentation. In 2011, cola was added to the batter to make deep-fried cola; 2023 brought the butter tart funnel cake. The year after that there was a mochi funnel cake with the added surprise that it could either be sweet or spicy.
2) The colossal onion
The savoury cousin to the funnel cake speaks to what many carnivalgoers want in a midway snack: big, shareable and deep-fried, with the added bonus of looking good in photos. It’s the ideal once-a-year novelty for anyone who doesn’t want to risk indigestion on the freakier fare but still wants something more interesting than popcorn or fries. The Colossal Onion is the sensible CNE goer’s snack: fun-looking but not outrageous tasting, easy to split and, if you’ll humour me, shaped like a beautiful lotus flower.
Ice cream waffle sandwich vs Primo Spaghetti 99: Which CNE mainstay will you vote for?
3) The ice cream waffle sandwich
Perhaps the oldest CNE mainstay is the ice cream waffle sandwich that has been on the midway for more than 85 years.
Sure, it might seem simple by today’s standards: two rectangular waffles with a faint hint of vanilla sandwiching a brick of vanilla ice cream. But imagine this thing existing during the Second World War, when the term “teenager” was coined. It might not get much social media attention these days, but tens of thousands are still sold every season; a testament to its ability to outlast trends.
4) The Primo Spaghetti 99
At the end of the day, it’s basically a small plate of spaghetti and marinara. But when Primo first brought its booth to the CNE in the 1970s, Italian food was still considered unfamiliar to the masses, owner Sam Scanga told me in 2024. That made the booth a perfect fit for the CNE’s mandate to showcase what’s up-and-coming to the public. The 99-cent price, which lasted for decades before finally increasing in 2022, also made Italian food accessible to people who might not have had an Italian restaurant in their city.
The corndog vs the Beavertail: you can only pick one portable friedstuff
5) The corndog
No cutlery, no greasy hands, no plates or bowls. The corndog is the ideal companion for traversing the CNE grounds. A hot dog dipped in thick cornmeal batter provides a sweet, nutty contrast to the salty centre, and with a squiggle of mustard and ketchup, the classic version needs nothing else. But like the funnel cake, the corndog has also become a blank canvas for experimentation. In 2023, the peanut butter pickle corndog arrived, proving that even the most classic CNE foods aren’t safe from reinvention.
6) The BeaverTail
Even if fried dough isn’t not something most Canadians eat every day, there’s something wonderfully fun about going full Canadiana and ordering one at a fair or tourist attraction — and even hardcore foodies like me are happy to embrace it. The company has introduced plenty of CNE-exclusive toppings over the years, including brownie cheesecake and cinnamon bun versions, but I’m partial to the classic cinnamon sugar.
Tiny Tom Donuts vs deep-fried butter: which bite sized snack will win?
7) The Tiny Tom Donuts
It’s hard to imagine any other foodstuff as synonymous with the CNE as these little bags of piping-hot, sugar-coated doughnuts, which have been around since 1960. Part of the fun is watching the fat little doughnuts make their way from the fryer to the conveyor belt before being tossed with sugar while still hot. The warmth radiating from the crinkling paper bag, the faint smell of cinnamon sugar — if the CNE ever released an official perfume, it would probably smell like a bag of Tom’s.
While there is a year-round Tiny Tom’s store in Markham, there’s just something about getting a bag at the CNE.
8) The deep-fried butter
Introduced by Vickie Skinkle at her namesake Vicky Skinkle’s Sweet Treats booth in 2010, I consider this the watershed moment when carnival treats started getting increasingly outrageous. Social media was still in its infancy, but deep-fried butter was an early example of a photogenic food seemingly designed to be shared online. And despite a name that has more bite than the actual taste — think a warm Timbit with extra buttery moistness — it arrived at exactly the right time. The early 2010s were the golden era of hipsterdom and lumbersexuals, when fatty off-cuts of meat were all the rage. Deep-frying butter fit right in.
