Aurora Winter Festival is back for its second year, and this year it has moved to the PNE. It bills itself as Canada’s largest winter festival with a skating rink, tub park, massive light displays, a Christmas Market, amusement park rides and plenty of food. It will be in town until January 5, 2020.
I came by earlier this week to sample some of their food truck offerings.
Green Coast Coffee started as a “Cold Brew Bike” rolling down Vancouver streets pouring nitro cold brew coffee, since then they’ve upgraded to 4 mobile units. One of those units will be operating at Aurora Winter Fest until January 5. I tried two of their handcrafted deluxe hot chocolates – Hazelnut Dark Chocolate and White Chocolate Macadamia.
The former tasted like a hedgehog chocolate mixed with Nutella and was such a delicious indulgence. The latte art on the hot chocolate was a nice touch. The other drink was like drinking a liquidized version of a white chocolate macadamia nut cookie. It’s definitely on the sweeter side – perfect for those with a big sweet tooth!
The chimney cake from The Praguery was one of favourites from the food tour. The chimney cake was crisp on the outside and light and fluffy on the inside. The chimney cake itself wasn’t too sweet which I appreciated. The white chocolate added a layer of decadence and the sprinkles were a cute touch. For an additional dollar you can add Nutella or lemon curd filling for an extra special treat.
Cannoli King has been handcrafting Sicilian cannoli for over 35 years. Everything is made from scratch. We got to try two different flavours of their holiday cannolis’ and both were delicious. They were filled fresh right in front of us, so the shell was still crisp when we bit into it.
Cartems Donuts is all about quality ingredients and creative flavours, and they have crafted two donuts that available exclusively at Aurora Winter Fest. My standout favourite was the Dulce Honeycomb. Honeycomb is one of my favourite sweets and this donut was absolutely covered in it. It was crunchy from the candy with a soft and moist vanilla cake donut base.
The Haskap Berry Shortbread was a lovely pink colour. Haskap is the Japanese name for the Edible Blue Honeysuckle, and the berry has a tart taste that is similar to raspberry. I found the glaze to be on the sweeter side and the shortbread component was just the crumb coating but it’s still a good donut.
Meat and Bread is serving up all of their delicious sandwiches like Porchetta, ham hock and vegetarian. They have an exclusive sandwich available at Aurora – Hot Turkey. This sandwich was like eating a holiday dinner between two slices of delicious crusty bread. There’s shredded turkey, brown butter yam puree, homemade cranberry spread and a veggie salad with purple cabbage, carrot, kale and peppers.
Like all there sandwiches, this was a messy and fulfilling bite. Juice from all the sauces and the turkey were running down my hands.
Shameless Buns is a Filipino inspired food truck serving up delicious eats from their custom build jeepney. In addition to their regular menu, they have a specialty Christmas menu available exclusively for Aurora. I got to try their Adobo fries today with a side of their famous banana ketchup. I love skinny fries so this dish was right up my alley. On top of the fries were braised chicken adobo, adobo gravy, garlic calamansi aioli, tomato, green onion and garlic chips. This dish was on the saltier side, but it was so addictive!
Reel Mac & Cheese serves up comfort food in the form of mac and cheese. All their dishes have a tongue in cheek name that play on pop culture references. Today I tried their two Christmas specials created for Aurora – The Grinch and Bad Santa.
The Grinch is their mac and cheese topped with broccoli florets and crispy onion. It was rather simple in that the topping was just steamed broccoli. Bad Santa had the same macaroni base but was topped with pineapple and ham. This was reminiscent of a Hawaiian pizza and I preferred it over The Grinch. It was on the saltier side from the ham, but the pineapple added a nice touch of sweetness.
Overall there’s a lot more food offerings this year in comparison to last years festival. There will definitely be something to satisfy everyone’s tastebuds. Check it out before the festival ends on January 5. You can purchase tickets here!
