It’s that time of year again: wasps are ravenous, store shelves are stocked with back-to-school supplies and everything is coming up dill pickle. Summer is drawing to a close, which means the CNE is back and primed to top itself once again. This year’s lineup includes drag queens, an interactive Pink Floyd exhibition and a new wing for cardiac patients—just kidding, but there is a whole slew of wacky food vendors ready for their fifteen seconds of TikTok fame. We’ve gone ahead and classified some of the extreme eats from weird to wonderful to “What were they thinking?”
Wow, that’s weird
Cheeseburger ice cream
After attracting hour-long lineups last year for their ketchup and mustard ice cream, the people behind the condiment-flavoured cones have opted for a sensible follow-up: cheeseburger ice cream. Served in a cheesy waffle cone with a sesame-seed rim, the barbecue sauce soft serve (meant to mimic the smoky notes of a grilled burger without actual meat) is garnished with a pickle spear and a fried onion ring for a true vegetarian delight.
Korean fried frog legs
Move over, chicken! From vendor Farm to Fryer comes the slightly chewy yet satisfyingly sweet, spicy and oh-so-crispy frog’s legs. Looks like Kermit, tastes like chicken.
Pickle cotton candy
It seems wrong that spun sugar, dyed green and flavoured with dill pickle powder, is actually kind of good—but, then again, what would our ancestors think of half the stuff we eat today?
Street-corn lemonade
While Mexican crema and Cotija cheese are most welcome to move freely among a variety of foods as a topping or a stuffing, as a beverage mix-in, they’re out of the question. Thankfully, the people behind the surprisingly satisfying street-corn lemonade agree, and they leave the dairy out of their new drink. This salty, sour and sweet concoction of lemon, lime, parsley, chive, Tajin and, oh yeah, corn juice tastes like a clarified caesar without the vodka or tomato—and is surprisingly refreshing.
Savoury cannoli
From Italian sandwich kings San Francesco comes a true bastardization of Nonna’s home baking: a cinnamon cannoli stuffed with breaded veal, provolone cheese and tomato sauce, drizzled with garlic aioli, garnished with Hickory Sticks and finished with sprinkles—because, hey, it’s the CNE, baby. Bada bing.
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Whoa, that’s good
The Butter Chicken Overload
From Rick’s Good Eats comes a monstrous sandwich that is equal parts gorgeous and grotesque but also 100 per cent delicious. Spicy tandoori fried chicken is dunked in butter chicken sauce and topped with lettuce, tomatoes, pickled onions, cheddar cheese and—wait for it—fries loaded with butter chicken. It’s then doused with tandoori aioli and perversely placed between two butter chicken samosas. Your move, Double Down.
Fruity Pebble cheese curds
For the first time in a long time, Fruity Pebbles have returned to Canada, and the self-anointed King of Curds is using the colourful cereal to create something magical. They smother deep-fried cheese curds in a top-secret cereal-milk glaze and finish it all off with an ungodly amount of Fruity Pebbles. Yabba dabba do it.
Peanut butter pickle dog
Though seemingly something that only the discontinued pregnant Barbie doll, Midge, would have gravitated toward, this hot dog inside a pickle, covered with peanut butter, dipped in corn batter and drizzled with jam, actually lands on the palate like an otherworldly satay.
Cookie-stuffed chimney cones
Speaking of Barbie, pink seems to be an underlying food theme this year. And while we can be thankful that fried flamingo didn’t make it onto the festival food circuit, this pretty-in-pink vanilla soft serve with a strawberry coulis centre stuffed into a strawberry-wafer-cookie-sprinkled chimney cone and topped with a strawberry sugar cookie and a strawberry wafer most deservedly did.
Deep-fried pizza
Pizza Pizza’s carnival take on the traditional slice coats a triangle of cheese pizza in batter, deep-fries it and drizzles it with hot honey. The crunchy, already-very-bad-for-you wedge is then covered with pickles, drizzled with creamy garlic and buffalo sauces, and sprinkled with crushed nacho-cheese Doritos. Our only question: Why hasn’t someone done this sooner?
Pineapple-lychee-habanero iced green tea
There was a time when roller coasters only went forward and iced tea was just sweet tea with ice. Times have changed. Yogen Früz’s habanero-infused green tea is a properly imbalanced, tentatively thrilling drink built on ups and downs—tropical notes from the pineapple, daggers of spice from the habanero and rounded-out moments with bites of sweet lychee jelly.
Quarter-pound cheese-stuffed Doritos
Remember that nut-covered cheese ball that made the potluck party rounds back in the ’80s? This is like that but instead of cream cheese, it’s a quarter-pound ball of mozzarella. And instead of nuts, it’s coated in zesty cheese Doritos. Oh yeah, then it’s dropped in the deep fryer. Or you can opt for this mac-and-cheese-stuffed chimichanga, equally as wrong-but-right.
Churro s’mores
This take on the classic s’more from Pancho’s Bakery takes deep-fried cinnamon-and-sugar-encrusted churros formed into the shape of hamburger buns and stuffs them with milk chocolate and giant marshmallows. Graham crackers had a good run.
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What even was that?
Malibu mac and cheese
Sure, if Barbieland had a restaurant, it would serve this technicolour mac and cheese concocted with a bubblegum-pink champagne cheese sauce of Gruyère, cheddar and parmesan (and topped with caviar for an extra $10). But that’s because it tastes kind of like plastic.
Watermelon burger
Perhaps an attempt to reimagine the watermelon-and-feta salad trend from 2008, this burger patty on a slab of feta stuffed between two watermelon wedges and drizzled with balsamic vinaigrette seems unlikely to become the next big thing. E for effort, though.
Pickle fries
Pickles are great. French fries can be transcendent. In this case, though, mixing them together seems to amount to a soggy, fried, pickled potato that tastes more like green food colouring than it does dill. Still, looks darn good on an Instagram feed.
Four-pound taco
Bigger isn’t always better. That adage applies to this oversized taco stuffed with a whopping four pounds of all the fixings: cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, sour cream, pico de gallo, avocado, tomatillo salsa, pineapple, chorizo and—that classic taco filling—french fries. Sounds good, doesn’t it? Now, try to pick it up.
TOKYO (AP) — Japanese technology group SoftBank swung back to profitability in the July-September quarter, boosted by positive results in its Vision Fund investments.
Tokyo-based SoftBank Group Corp. reported Tuesday a fiscal second quarter profit of nearly 1.18 trillion yen ($7.7 billion), compared with a 931 billion yen loss in the year-earlier period.
Quarterly sales edged up about 6% to nearly 1.77 trillion yen ($11.5 billion).
SoftBank credited income from royalties and licensing related to its holdings in Arm, a computer chip-designing company, whose business spans smartphones, data centers, networking equipment, automotive, consumer electronic devices, and AI applications.
The results were also helped by the absence of losses related to SoftBank’s investment in office-space sharing venture WeWork, which hit the previous fiscal year.
WeWork, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 2023, emerged from Chapter 11 in June.
SoftBank has benefitted in recent months from rising share prices in some investment, such as U.S.-based e-commerce company Coupang, Chinese mobility provider DiDi Global and Bytedance, the Chinese developer of TikTok.
SoftBank’s financial results tend to swing wildly, partly because of its sprawling investment portfolio that includes search engine Yahoo, Chinese retailer Alibaba, and artificial intelligence company Nvidia.
SoftBank makes investments in a variety of companies that it groups together in a series of Vision Funds.
The company’s founder, Masayoshi Son, is a pioneer in technology investment in Japan. SoftBank Group does not give earnings forecasts.
Shopify Inc. executives brushed off concerns that incoming U.S. President Donald Trump will be a major detriment to many of the company’s merchants.
“There’s nothing in what we’ve heard from Trump, nor would there have been anything from (Democratic candidate) Kamala (Harris), which we think impacts the overall state of new business formation and entrepreneurship,” Shopify’s chief financial officer Jeff Hoffmeister told analysts on a call Tuesday.
“We still feel really good about all the merchants out there, all the entrepreneurs that want to start new businesses and that’s obviously not going to change with the administration.”
Hoffmeister’s comments come a week after Trump, a Republican businessman, trounced Harris in an election that will soon return him to the Oval Office.
On the campaign trail, he threatened to impose tariffs of 60 per cent on imports from China and roughly 10 per cent to 20 per cent on goods from all other countries.
If the president-elect makes good on the promise, many worry the cost of operating will soar for companies, including customers of Shopify, which sells e-commerce software to small businesses but also brands as big as Kylie Cosmetics and Victoria’s Secret.
These merchants may feel they have no choice but to pass on the increases to customers, perhaps sparking more inflation.
If Trump’s tariffs do come to fruition, Shopify’s president Harley Finkelstein pointed out China is “not a huge area” for Shopify.
However, “we can’t anticipate what every presidential administration is going to do,” he cautioned.
He likened the uncertainty facing the business community to the COVID-19 pandemic where Shopify had to help companies migrate online.
“Our job is no matter what comes the way of our merchants, we provide them with tools and service and support for them to navigate it really well,” he said.
Finkelstein was questioned about the forthcoming U.S. leadership change on a call meant to delve into Shopify’s latest earnings, which sent shares soaring 27 per cent to $158.63 shortly after Tuesday’s market open.
The Ottawa-based company, which keeps its books in U.S. dollars, reported US$828 million in net income for its third quarter, up from US$718 million in the same quarter last year, as its revenue rose 26 per cent.
Revenue for the period ended Sept. 30 totalled US$2.16 billion, up from US$1.71 billion a year earlier.
Subscription solutions revenue reached US$610 million, up from US$486 million in the same quarter last year.
Merchant solutions revenue amounted to US$1.55 billion, up from US$1.23 billion.
Shopify’s net income excluding the impact of equity investments totalled US$344 million for the quarter, up from US$173 million in the same quarter last year.
Daniel Chan, a TD Cowen analyst, said the results show Shopify has a leadership position in the e-commerce world and “a continued ability to gain market share.”
In its outlook for its fourth quarter of 2024, the company said it expects revenue to grow at a mid-to-high-twenties percentage rate on a year-over-year basis.
“Q4 guidance suggests Shopify will finish the year strong, with better-than-expected revenue growth and operating margin,” Chan pointed out in a note to investors.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 12, 2024.
TORONTO – RioCan Real Estate Investment Trust says it has cut almost 10 per cent of its staff as it deals with a slowdown in the condo market and overall pushes for greater efficiency.
The company says the cuts, which amount to around 60 employees based on its last annual filing, will mean about $9 million in restructuring charges and should translate to about $8 million in annualized cash savings.
The job cuts come as RioCan and others scale back condo development plans as the market softens, but chief executive Jonathan Gitlin says the reductions were from a companywide efficiency effort.
RioCan says it doesn’t plan to start any new construction of mixed-use properties this year and well into 2025 as it adjusts to the shifting market demand.
The company reported a net income of $96.9 million in the third quarter, up from a loss of $73.5 million last year, as it saw a $159 million boost from a favourable change in the fair value of investment properties.
RioCan reported what it says is a record-breaking 97.8 per cent occupancy rate in the quarter including retail committed occupancy of 98.6 per cent.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 12, 2024.
