REGINA — The Queen City EX (QCX) has dozens of vendors this year selling anything from corndogs to ice cream.
Some of these vendors have been around the QCX for years now, including Meester Mike’s, who owns multiple food spots.
Franchesco Ashley of Meester Mike’s said their signature dish is rice balls.
“The base would be a rice ball, and a person has a choice of either ground beef or chicken.”
These rice balls are topped with cheese, lettuce, salsa, or sour cream.
“It’s different than the rice balls of Japan or China.”
Ashley said he loves coming to the QCX yearly and connecting with new people.
“It's a beautiful thing where you get acquainted with people and you can have laughs and smiles over food.”
Another regular vendor is mini donuts, famous for their cinnamon mix original flavour mini donuts.
“The donut is a cinnamon sugar mix, which you sift by hand,” said Nathan Oosthoek of Mini Donuts.
Oosthoek said people love the flavour of mini donuts, and roughly 400 people have already visited their vendor.
”After three days, we will probably gross a revenue of $1,000.”
While many vendors have established themselves at the QCX, Vaibhav Patel is selling his own food at the fair for the first time.
“We have seven main flavours of cotton candy. So blue raspberry, bubble gum and banana. Then we have grape, we have vanilla and then strawberry and watermelon as well.“
One difference Patel has compared to other cotton candy vendors is selling ones with different food items on them.
“We use cookies as an eye. We use cereal as a nose, and then we cut the different colour shapes to mould ears, lips, and other stuff.”
These food materials are shaped into classic kid cartoon characters like Pikachu or the Minions.
On their first day, Patel estimates 300 cotton candies were sold.
He has plans to sell his cotton candy at several weddings coming up as well.
