Out of what barbarous impulse, we wonder, comes the increasing militarization of the Canada National Exhibition’s fried-food offerings? Any reasonable person likes a funnel cake or a bunch of fries, sure. Hell, we can even be charmed by the occasional fried Mars bar — do you think we’re made of stone? But the CNE’s selection is something more akin to a bestiary of monstrous deep-fried nightmares, ranging from the dangerous to the ghastly. Here, in order of the horror they inspire in us, are five memorable fried foods sold at the CNE…
Deep-Fried Cheese Curds
Again, are we made of stone? We are not made of stone. This is a delicious idea, particularly to those who’ve had fried Haloumi and have since dreamed of frying a more tender, less salty cheese. Grease is like a lingering, wet kiss on the lips of a good cheese, and the batter is the love that binds them together, through sickness and — well, there isn’t going to be any health, but you know what we mean.
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Deep-Fried Vachon Cakes
So you’ve recently broken up with someone. Perhaps you started drinking before noon. Maybe you’ve just overcome anorexia and want to throw yourself with gusto into gaining back the weight you lost? And you want something that tastes good — you want that dipped in batter, and deep fried, so it tastes really good, even if while you’re eating it you can’t help but wonder if whatever you’re doing, you’re going about it the wrong way. Maybe you need therapy. Maybe you need to put the bottle down a while. Maybe you need to focus on gaining weight back slowly and gently, through a thorough course of complex carbohydrates. But none of that is what’s happening here, so you might as well own it.
Deep-Fried Butter
Look, we get the principle here, but dunking grease in batter and frying it in grease is a thing a crazy person does. Deep-fried butter holds tight to the idea of having too much of a good thing and jumps with it into the storm-tossed sea of sheer, suicidal lunacy. We can’t even imagine this without immediately picturing the heartburn that would instantaneously follow, setting upon one’s esophagus as though it were the very fires of hell. Which we’re not sure it wouldn’t be.
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Deep-Fried Cola
Oh, come on. Cola is a liquid (as is Kool-Aid, another of the Ex’s truly questionable deep-fried offerings). Why would you fry it? Because it’s there? That’s not a good enough excuse. On being asked why he robbed banks, legendary bandit Willie Sutton reportedly answered, “Because that’s where the money is.” Fair enough! But what, we ask you, is in deep-fried cola? (Other than arterial damage?)
Krispy Kreme Burger
A cheeseburger. With bacon. Sandwiched in, rather than a bun, a Krispy Kreme doughnut. Imagining the states of mind of those present at the invention of this culinary calamity, we would like to paraphrase Robert Oppenheimer: “We knew the world would not be the same. Few people laughed, few people cried, most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad-Gita. […] ‘Now I am become Death, the destroyer of [bowels].'”
