Pickle-dusted doughnuts, pb&j chicken among new KDays food creations

More than 35 new food items will be served at KDays this summer, including peanut butter and jam chicken waffle cones and cowboy candy mango soft serve.

Sweet and savoury combos are headlining this year’s KDays food menu.

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On Monday, the popular summer festival released some of the new treats making their debut July 18 at the Edmonton Expo Centre.

The midway munchies include sweet offerings like ice cream nachos, sweet and spicy mango soft serve and pickle-dusted mini doughnuts.

Visitors seeking something more savoury can satisfy their pallets with pickled cheese curds, a ramen burrito, peanut-butter and jelly fried chicken or a Japanese waffle burger.

“People have jumped on board and created curated products that support the festival’s theme and support the history and the iconic sort of vibe around KDays,” said Ziyah Karmali with Explore Edmonton.

Yelo’d Ice Cream and Bake shop is slinging scoops of its festival flavour midway mixup, with all purchases of more than $12 earning two free tickets.

“We’ve had lots of fun,” said owner Jason Wong. “It’s taking Oreos from the midway and cotton candy and mixing everything together.”

“And then at our sister shop, Little Bonbon in Chinatown, we made a five spice mini donut.”

Wong said the shops have already given more than 1,200 tickets away.

“We’ve been selling a lot of pints, a lot of scoops, and, yeah, it’s been really, really great,” he added.

Flirt Cupcakes’ special features includes four KDays-themed cupcakes for $20: cotton candy, gold rush, caramel apple and mini donut.

The bakery received 500 tickets to give away, at no cost.

“All the money goes to us. As a small business, it helps so much and it’s just nice,” said co-owner Brianna Vallet.

This is the second year for the initiative. Karmali said it brought in $125,000 in direct sales for business’ last year.

With more than 38,000 free tickets to give out this year, she expects that number to grow.

“We’ve only just started and we’ve already seen a huge uptake compared to last year,” she said. “It’s pretty cool.”

More information on the full KDays menu will be posted here when available.

With files from CTV News Edmonton’s Amanda Anderson