This past weekend we went to the Calgary Stampede and was excited to try out the different food.
The Stampede is a big venue with a lot of different food stands, I’d say more than what we had at Playland/PNE. We walked through this one section with tons of food, which gave of us ideas of what we wanted to order at a bar. How was the food we tried? Read more to find out.
Corn Dog – $5
Honestly, this is the best corn dog I’ve had. We got it from a place that says Jumbo Corn Dogs. We got a regular one for about $5, but they also had foot long ones for $6. What was so awesome about it? The batter. It had a nice corn meal batter, freshly fried. Crisp exterior, nice and airy inside. It was really good and not oily. I saw some other people with Corn Dogs from other places, and they looked dead, and the batter looked way too thick. I recommend this one.
Mini Donuts – $5 / 2 bags
Yum, how can you go to a Fair and not have these cinnamon-sugar mini donuts? It’s a must for me. We got “The Best Little Donuts Around”. And they were just as good as I remember. I think each bag had a dozen donuts. Of course, they are only really good when they are hot.
Fried Oreos – $5
This was a first for me. And it wasn’t half bad. After biting into it, you could tell it was definitely an Oreo. It was nice and warm, and the cookie was a bit melted and gooey. I enjoyed it. I think it was either 4-5 deep fried oreos for $5. The same stand had deep fried snickers, twinkies, cheese cakes, and strawberry short cakes from about $4-7.
Steak Sandwich – $9
We got the steak sandwich from a stand called London Broil. They had a ton of meat grilling all day. This was pretty big sandwich, but pretty pricey at $9. You could top it off with cheese, peppers, and mushrooms, it’s your choice. I may recommend staying away because the peppers and mushrooms don’t really add much. They are very bland, and seemed like they were canned, or boiled for a really long time. Very dead. Not much flavour. The meat was sliced thin, and stacked high on the sandwich. The meat was pretty good, but some of it was charred a little bit too much.
Lemonade – $6 / jumbo – $3 / small
We got our Lemonade from a place inside the Convention centre called Lemon Heaven. They were freshly squeezing the lemonade infront of us. I think they squeezed the juice of one or two lemons into a cup, and sliced that lemon and threw it in the cup, then added some water and sugar? It was really good and refreshing. Just the right amount of sweetness and sourness. $6 is quite a lot for some lemon, water, ice, and sugar though. But it was a pretty big cup. They also have stands outside on the fairgrounds. It was good.
There were a lot of other food we wanted to try out too, but we didn’t have time or big enough stomachs because we also wanted to eat downtown too. Things were noting were Pizza on a Stick, lots of different french fries, Turkey Legs, boneless wings, and donairs, just to name a few. There were probably a lot more. So if you are there, let us know what was good. Overall most of the food we had were really good, and I’m probably going to binge eat on everything I see next time I go to Playland. I’ll post my adventure for that too.
2 Comments on "Calgary Stampede Food Adventure"
Now I’m regretting not trying the deep-fried Oreos. We had the Twinkie and the jelly beans instead. I don’t normally like Twinkies but I liked the deep-fried one because anything battered and freshly deep-fried is good.
The deep-fried jelly beans weren’t what I expected at all. The tray came with 5 round donuts with Jelly Bellys inside and topped off with powdered sugar. The jelly beans were warm and soft, but they bled colour so it made the donut look like one of those Christmas fruit cakes. Worth a try just so you can say you had ‘em but not something you’d have again.
I had the BBQ beef sandwich inside the rodeo grandstand, and it was nothing special. Just some pulled beef doused in BBQ sauce in a hoagie bun.
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