CNE pushes food chaos to extremes: butter chicken taquitos, KD smoothies, pickle cheesecake

If there's one place in Toronto where the line between snack and stunt gets deliciously blurry, it's the Canadian National Exhibition. The CNE — running August 21 to September 7 at Exhibition Place — has transformed food into its own spectacle, with vendors offering mashups, sky-high creations and indulgences designed to be eaten, photographed and, in some cases, questioned.

Ricks Good Eats, a Punjabi-Canadian comfort food vendor, is leading the charge with the Footlong Butter Chicken Taquito ($14.95). The crispy fried creation is packed with butter chicken, basmati rice, and served with creamy butter chicken aioli. "I have IV that you can hook up for more butter chicken, it's like electrolytes," Chef Rick Matharu joked. "I think it's going to be the hottest thing this year."

Supreme Pierogi is blending cultures with the Jamaican Beef Patty Mini Pierogis — spiced beef patty filling inside mini dumplings, served with sour cream ($16 per plateful, in the Food Building). The owner, whose Polish family moved to Toronto when he was six, met his wife from Tobago here. "A lot of Caribbean flavours are constantly going in our kitchen, it felt like a natural pairing of the two flavours," he said. "It's also a very nostalgic Toronto street food."

Sweet-and-savoury pairings dominate this year's lineup. Mr. Pickle's Pickle Cheesecake Pop ($18) is a NY-style cheesecake on a stick, dipped in chocolate and rolled in crunchy dill pickle potato chips. "A lot of people try it and say, 'Damn, that's better than I thought it would be,'" according to the vendor.

For those craving something even more experimental, there's a KD smoothie blending Kraft Dinner cheese flavour with mango, pineapple juice, vanilla frozen yogurt and skim milk — a mashup that's generated heat on social media ahead of the fair's opening.