TORONTO – Kraft Dinner smoothies, nitrogen-infused Oreo treats and pickle-flavoured coffee are among the wild food offerings at the Canadian National Exhibition this year.
Daring food combinations are usually the stars of the annual end-of-summer Toronto fair that also features carnival rides and will include an Ontario Science Centre pop-up this year.
“Toronto is one of the greatest food cities in the world and so we take our responsibility really seriously to be a big part of that,” Mark Holland, CEO of the fair, said Wednesday at a preview of the event.
“There’s so much creativity that goes into this. The folks that we work with, I love seeing what they come up with and a lot of it is actually super delicious,” he said.
The former federal health minister says the butter chicken taquitos are his favourite this year.
The Kraft Dinner smoothies are billed as a “refreshing” sweet and savoury treat, with cheesy KD Shaker dust blended with mango, pineapple juice and vanilla frozen yogurt.
The sweet and savoury combos span from jerk chicken hotdogs wrapped in waffles to ramen shell kimchee chicken tacos — both featuring bright pink cotton candy and the CNE’s new Sweet Heat cotton candy hot sauce.
Greekery Bakeshop is bringing other startling summer flavours: a smoky bacon and white chocolate iced mocha, and a dill pickle Greek iced coffee.
“The pickle flavour has just been a staple at the CNE for so long, so we’ve been trying to incorporate it into our menu and this year we finally figured out how to do it with our own dill pickle flavour,” said Greekery Bakeshop employee Audrey St-Gelais.
“It’s just blended into the coffee with the sugar and everything else.”
The frozen “Space Rocks” treat is a nod to this year’s galactic theme — Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen will answer questions about the Artemis II mission and life in space on Friday, the fair’s opening day.
The Oreo treats were carefully doled out of a freezing cold bucket on Wednesday, and otherworldly clouds of nitrogen fog spilled out of the bowls.
Some of the offerings were bite-sized, such as edible spheres filled with blue raspberry dirty soda and strawberry cold foam. Others were more of a commitment, including the foot-long butter chicken taquito, which is stuffed with fragrant basmati rice and served with a creamy aioli.
Beach Hill Smokehouse is serving up a unique twist on southern American classics with warm, crispy waffle cones stuffed with sweet candied yams and topped with a hearty serving of house-made mac and cheese.
The idea came effortlessly to smokehouse pitmaster Jaden List.
“We didn’t think too hard on it, we kind of like sat down in the living room one night, talked as a family and the ideas just started downloading in the head,” List said in an interview.
The city’s public transit agency is planning to add service on bus and streetcar routes that serve Exhibition Place while the CNE runs through Labour Day.
The TTC will also run dedicated CNE shuttle buses providing service between the subway line at Dufferin Station and the Dufferin Loop near the exhibition grounds, it said.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Aug. 19, 2026.
