We were invited to the PNE Food Tweetup this past Tuesday. An event planned by @mis_sy to round up a bunch of Vancouver’s popular Twitter personalities and bloggers to hang out at the PNE and try out a bunch of the food. We weren’t too sure what the exact details of what was going to happen, but we were excited to meet a bunch of the bloggers and people that we tweet with.
We were told that 24Hours and CTV were going to cover the event, making me a bit nervous. I’m pretty camera shy haha.. Anyways, at about 6PM we were lead into the grounds and brought to our reserved seating area where we were told what this event was about. We were given 3 vouchers worth $10 each to try out the food at the PNE. Being that there are 2 of us writing for MePlusFood, Beipas got 2 extra vouchers. $50 of food for us! There were some additional prizes to get us more adventurous and to help out with the tweeting to add a little bit more fun to the event.
I haven’t been to the PNE or Playland for close to 4 years, I just remember eating hotdogs, corndogs, burgers, and mini donuts. We went to the Calgary Stampede in July and was amazed by all the different types of foods that they sold. Well, the PNE has way more different types of food to satisfy any of your cravings. While searching for food we really wanted to try something adventurous. Besides your regular hotdogs and burgers, they had a bunch of ethnic food there which I never paid attention to a few years ago. So some of these places may have been there for a while, but I certainly never noticed them, so it was a pleasant surprise.
Dish 1: Curry-in-a-Hurry – Muttar Paneer with rice and papardam ($8). I’m not too familiar with Indian food, but I’ve started to try it a lot more. Muttar Paneer is a pea and paneer (cheese) curry. I was really disappointed with it because there was no paneer to be found. It was just a slightly spicy tomato-based pea stew. The papardam (I think it’s really spelled pappadam) is a really thin and crispy flat bread which was pretty good. 
Note: They had a lot of other food there. I was just being adventurous and trying new stuff. They have the favourites like butter chicken, chicken tikka, and samosas there too.
Dish 2: Vina’s Special of the day – Spicy Basil Chicken with Spring Roll, Salad, and Vermicelli ($12). The chicken, was flavourful, but was dry and overcooked. My favourite part of the dish was the spring rolls which were still really crispy and packed with pork and vietnamese flavours.
Dish 3: Jimmy’s Lunch Deluxe Cheese Burger – It was loaded with sauteed onions, cheese, and some other stuff. I only took a bite out of it, but it wasn’t bad. Just very messy!
Dish 4: C-Lovers Fish & Chips – ?? I’m allergic haha. One piece of fish and fries was about $8. I heard this was decent.
Dish 5: Whales Tails Deluxe Apple Pie – A Whale Tail is pretty much a Beaver Tail (which I’ve also never had). It’s big deep fried piece of bread that was topped with a cinnamon sugar topping. Probably already good by itself, you can get toppings on it. We got the apple pie, and added whip cream and chocolate. The apples were very tender, and of course tasted really good with the cinnamon sugar. The bread was kind of crisp along the outer edges. They supposedly used to be puffier. This is something that I’d buy next time I go to the PNE, but maybe a different flavour.
I was glad for this tweet up because it brought me back to the PNE after so many years away. It also opened my eyes to all of the different food you can eat there. I really wanted to try the poutine, funnel cake, turkey leg, and wiggle chips. Many of the people got food from a Ukranian places that was really close by and raved about the food. I’m sad I missed out. That was the sleeper hit I think. I also wanted to try the Roaming Dragon Truck because they had some asian spiced fries that looked good in pictures, and a lychee-basil lemonade. Sliders, and Korean tacos too. Checkout the pictures of just some of the different food vendors at the PNE. There are plenty more.
