Fab fair food: Asian-fusion flavours are hot at PNE 2024

Foodies are in for a treat at this summer’s PNE fair in Vancouver.

The midway is filled with new and familiar culinary offerings that include 95th-year celebrations for Jimmy’s Lunch, where Jim Parsons (grandson of the founder) still fries onions for iconic burgers and serves some of the best fries around, thanks to a good crop of Ladner-grown potatoes this year.

“We are proud of the potatoes, that’s for sure,” said Parsons, a North Vancouver carpenter when not cooking food, as reporters were treated to a taste of eight of the PNE’s many vendors.

“They’re fresh and local, and they were in the ground last Wednesday,” Parsons said of the spuds. “They make for the freshest fries you’re ever going to find.”

While PNE-tradition food is popular at Jimmy’s, other vendors have created new offerings for this year’s fair.

Grab a bite of the Szechuan Chicken Chow Main Pizza at Cheeky Pizza, where Piyyush Sahhay bakes the pie with a stirfry-based sauce of garlic, ginger, soy and oyster sauce, then tops it with cheese, chow mein noodles, veggies, chicken and spices. It sells for $7 a slice, $38 whole.

“It’s new, something we created for the PNE this year,” said Sahhay, who lives in Langley. “It has a little bit of punch with the Szechuan spice, gets all of the flavours going.”

Other spicy dishes are found at Kyu Grill, a place to find delicious Mango Chicken, Oko Nori Hawaiian Shrimp Fries and more crafted by Calvin Truong.

Sweet-toothed fair-goers will love Little Donut Bakery’s Ube Coconut Mini Donuts, made with purple yam and topped with shredded coconut.

Down the midway is Mini Donut Factory, where Jessie and Jason Au celebrate a 25th year at the PNE with new Takis-spiced mini donuts to die for, in a sweet-hot kind of way.

Nearby, UBC grad Picard Yui is selling Hong Kong-style French Toast “flights” at Tochi Desserts made with Japanese mochi and nutella.

Giant Squid on a Stick, anyone? Yup, it’s soaked in a seasoned bath for hours and breaded at the Happy Fish stand operated by Ying Yan Situ.

Sweet treats await at Summerland Soft Serve where Tod Marchant and family members are making Sour Candy-flavoured ice cream.

“This is 29 years for us here,” Marchant noted. “We always sell vanilla, chocolate and pineapple, and this year we came up with the sour candy because every year we try to come with something weird and exotic. We’ve done cotton candy in the past, we did Kraft Dinner ice cream here a couple of years ago, we’ve done Butter Beer, which is a Harry Potter thing. We try not to make it too gross,” he added with a laugh, “because it still has to taste good.”

Nearly three decades ago, Marchant’s first year at the PNE was working at a coffee stand.

“It was probably my first year at a big fair, and I was blown away,” he said. “Now we have slush and ice cream and we still have coffee here, at 10 booths with Marchant Concessions. After the PNE we’re pretty much wrapped up for the summer, other than cleaning all the trailers and putting them away for the winter.”

The 2024 PNE summer fair continues until Sept. 2 at Hastings Park in Vancouver.

This year, the fair’s diverse pop, rock, country and R&B concerts include Bachman-Turner Overdrive (Aug. 20), Daryl Hall (Aug. 21), John Fogerty (Aug. 22), Brad Paisley (Aug. 23), Charlotte Cardin (Aug. 25), The Commodores with The Pointer Sisters (Aug. 27), Flo Rida (Aug. 28), Blue Rodeo (Aug. 29), Ludacris (Aug. 30), Punjabi Virsa Night (Aug. 31) and Barenaked Ladies (Sept. 1).

Fair admission is included in the cost of a concert ticket, sold for $40 and up on ticketleader.ca/events/detail/snc-2024.

For the PNE concerts this summer, the Coliseum becomes a concert bowl for between 5,500 and 9,500 fans, with floor seats (reserved seating) and no general seating/standing in the arena.

Plan your adventures throughout the West Coast at westcoasttraveller.com and follow us on Facebook and Instagram @thewestcoasttraveller. And for the top West Coast Travel stories of the week delivered right to your inbox, sign up for our weekly Armchair Traveller newsletter!