The PNE Fair at the Pacific National Exhibition is back, and so is all the delicious food, from gourmet hot dogs to fancy ice creams and exotic ethnic treats!
The same as every year, on the menu in 2025 there are mini donuts, deep-fried desserts, foot-long hot dogs and other tasty items. Unique bites this year include Rotato Potato’s lobster tail poutine, Roasted Revolution’s fried chicken corn, Cheeky Italian’s blueberry mascarpone crumble pizza, Teriyaki Express’ cheesy corn japataco, and more.
In 2025 the PNE Fair runs from August 16th until September 1st.
To learn about the PNE in general, see our article about the PNE Fair or visit the attraction’s official website at pne.ca. To learn about this year’s food vendors, see below or visit pne.ca/fair-food.
The Pacific National Exhibition at the end of the summer wouldn’t be the PNE Fair without its food vendors. Similar to recent years, in 2025 there are over 50 food stalls on site!
Some of the Fair’s traditional favourites you can expect to see include the Super Foot Long Hot Dogs, the Little Donut Bakery, Jimmy’s Lunch, Corn Dog King and Hunky Bills Perogies. Other regulars you’ll see are Twisted Potato and Taco Nori, Mom’s Grilled Cheese Truck, Summerland Soft Serve, and many more.
New for 2025, the PNE has recommended wine pairings to go with some of its select, featured foods. You can order and pick up your eats at one of the food trucks and then head to the Wine Chalet or other wine-serving location to buy a glass of wine to go with whatever treat you got. (Note: The Wine Chalet might be the best place to go to get the wine pairing recommendations.)
Examples of wine pairings to try include Saintly’s Sauvignon Blanc with the deep-fried spiral pickle from Diggity Dogs or Saintly’s Rosé with the Bulgogi Chicken Dog from the same vendor. (Note: Good to know, Saintly’s Rosé is apparently BC’s top-selling wine!) Another option is the Black Cage Cabernet Sauvignon with the cheeseburger from Jimmy’s Lunch. And for dessert, Saintly’s The Good Sparkling pairs wonderfully with the mini donuts from Fundunkers. We’ve tried all four of these combinations and every one of them was delicious!
For tickets and full details about the PNE Fair, see the PNE.ca website.
Foods at the Fair in 2025
Every year the PNE introduces fun and unusual foods, and 2025 is no exception. Alongside returning food vendors, this year’s Fair features new dishes with different flavours and international twists. Some of the ones we’ve tried this year include the following (and all of them are delicious).
- BC Blueberry Mascarpone Crumble Pizza (at the Cheeky Italian): A creative pizza topped with blueberry ginger compote and cinnamon-orange mascarpone cream.
- Cowboy Candy Ice Cream (at Summerland Soft Serve): Mango soft serve rimmed with Mexican Tajin seasoning and finished with candied jalapeños for a mix of sweet and spicy.
- JapaCurryBeef Poutine (at Rotato Potato): A Japanese-inspired take on poutine with savoury curry beef flavours.
- Apple Crumble Perogies (at International Perogies): Mini perogies coated in cinnamon sugar and topped with apple pie filling, vanilla glaze and crumble.
- Ube Corndog (at the Corn Dog King): A corn dog with half sausage, half mozzarella, dipped in purple ube batter and topped with Kewpie mayo.
- Big Cocos (at Canadian Corndog): A maple bacon-battered corndog, fried crispy, topped with bacon and drizzled with maple syrup.
- Tarte au Sucre Donuts (at Little Donut Bakery): Mini donuts flavoured like the classic Québécois sugar pie with maple syrup.
- Dubai Funnel Cake (at Pennsylvania Funnel Cakes): A funnel cake topped with Dubai chocolate, pistachio crumble, cream, strawberries and whipped cream.
Other Foods We’ve Tested and Can Recommend
Just a few of the treats we’ve tried from PNE food vendors in the past who are back at the fair this year include the following:
- The iconic “Jimmy’s Burger” with onions and fries from Jimmy’s Lunch. We also got to try their poutine. Everything is very tasty. The fries in particular are exceptional. We’re told the potatoes were harvested from a farm in the Fraser Valley just a few days before. You can taste the freshness, and the flavor of the particular type of spud!
- The Ube Coconut Mini Donuts from the Little Donut Bakery are made from purple yams and come with a chocolate sauce and coconut sprinkles. The Little Donut Bakery also has corn bread donuts, plus other varieties. This place’s donut-making machines are fun to watch, and some of them are still the originals from the 1940s!
- Tochi Desserts, interestingly, is owned by a group of recent UBC grads. Their Hong Kong-style of French Toast is infused with Japanese mochi which is a tasty, slightly chewy filling that’s made from rice and comes in various flavours. A scoop of ice cream also comes with the dessert.
- Summerland Soft Serve is a great place to get soft ice cream. Every year they have a different special flavour.
For the full list of participating food vendors in 2025, see the pne.ca website.
To see some highlights of last year’s lineup of food vendors, check out the video below. You’ll see us eating poutine, French toast, pizza and other dishes from food trucks mentioned above.
Further below in this article you’ll find videos of featured foods from past PNE years. As you’ll see in one of the videos, in 2018 they were selling cricket-covered caramel apples! There are lots of exotic food items in 2025, but nothing with crickets (or at least not that we noticed).
For tickets and full details about the PNE Fair, see the PNE.ca website.
Other Food Trucks in 2025
The full list of food trucks at the PNE Fair in 2025 includes Aloha Poke, Cannoli King, Cheeky Italian, Chicky’s Chicken, Corn Dog King, Shrimp Boat, Curry in a Hurry, Diggity Dog, Dim Sum Express, Dos Amigos, Hunky Bills, International Perogies, Rotato Potato, Jamaican Mi Juicy, Smoothie Shoppe, and Japanese Teriyaki Express.
Other food vendors at the fair this year are Big Cocos, Double Decker Diner, Gary’s Kettle Corn, Mom’s Grilled Cheese Truck, Mr Pretzel, The Mad Greek, Prairie Smoke & Spice, REEL Mac & Cheese, Roasted Revolution, SaltSpring Noodle Bar, Squid Shack, Taco Nori, Mahshiko, Truckin BBQ, Veggie Bomb, and Urban Wood Fired Pizza.
Dessert and drink vendors at the PNE Fair this year also include Cheyenne Coffee, Cin City Donuts, Funnel Cakes, Fusion Icy, Lemon Heaven Lemonade, Rocky Point Ice Cream, Summerland Soft Serve, and West Family Fudge.
PNE Food Vendors from Past Years
Each year the PNE offers members of the media a tour of the Fair’s food vendor lineup. Below shows scenes of what we tried in 2023. What you’ll see includes a Coaster Dog hot dog from Diggity Dog (to commemorate the Wooden Roller Coaster’s 65th anniversary) and a meat and cheese sandwich from Mom’s Grilled Cheese Truck (where the beef was slow roasted birria-style). Yum!
Also in the following video, you’ll see us enjoying a salmon taco from Taco Nori (where instead of a hard corn tortilla it came in a deep-fried nori seaweed shell) and an ice cream and cotton candy dessert from Lickity Drippity (which was probably one of the PNE’s #1 top hits for kids that year).
(The music in the following food video from 2023 is by LiteSaturation from Pixabay.)
PNE Foods from 2020
In 2020, because of COVID, the PNE Fair operated in a drive-through format where people had to stay in their cars and see things from their vehicles. The PNE still had its annual food tour for the media, however, and we got to try Godzilla Macaroni from Reel Mac & Cheese, corn dog samples from the Corn Dog King, and perogies from Hunky Bill’s.
We also got to try some delicious noodles from Salt Spring Noodle Bar, a gourmet hot dog from Foot Long Hot Dogs, a deep-fried Kit Kat, and a donut chicken burger from Steve O’s. There was also poutine, twisted potatoes, mini donuts, and pineapple whip ice cream from Summerland Soft Serve.
Check out the following video from 2020. As you’ll see, even though the festival happened on a smaller scale than usual, there was still a wide selection of tasty offerings that year.
PNE Foods from 2018
In 2018 we headed to the PNE Fair early in the morning, before the place opened to the public, and sampled some of the latest and craziest food items at the fair. Below is a video about the media food tour we got to go on that year. Speaking in the video is Laura Balance, a spokesperson for the PNE.
Below is a video of Brian Jones from the B&B Diner describing his milkshake burgers to members of the media during a food tour at the PNE in 2018. Among other toppings, the burger included a scoop of garlic-flavoured ice cream. It was, surprisingly, very good!
There are always new exotic foods at the PNE and 2018 was no exception. Next Gen Concessions offered something sweet, sustainable, sticky and with a crunch! It was their cricket caramel apple that everyone was talking about!
The following video features a talk about the PNE’s cricket caramel apples during a presentation to media in August of 2018.
Other Information
For full details about the Fair, see the official Pacific National Exhibition website.
For more information about the PNE, see our article about the Pacific National Exhibition.
To learn more about the Pacific National Exhibition, check out the following articles:
Other articles that might be of interest include the following:
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