HELA SPICE TASTES THE CANADIAN NATIONAL EXHIBITION
HELA SPICE TASTES THE CNE
In our continued effort to go to shows and events, so that you don’t have to, we decided to attend the Food Building at the 2024 Canadian National Exhibition, in Toronto. For some it’s a sign that summer’s almost over, but for the creative geniuses in Hela Spice’s R&D team it’s time to taste some imaginative foods and give you our real opinions.
This year we wanted to make sure we tried the wildest options available to provide some inspiration to create new products and maybe take these concepts from the fairgrounds to your plant!
SUPERFLY NOODLES
First up, it’s Superfly noodles who are taking instant noodles to the next level with a wide range of toppings
- Unlimited toppings – good variety of options to add on
- Needs more flavour
- Good appearance, lacking in taste
- Chicken and beef indistinguishable – had unappealing aroma
- Beef overdone and spongy
Here’s how Hela Spice would do it:
Start with a delicious sweet and savoury Japanese style chashu pork, then make an instant tare style sauce to dress the noodles. Topped with a spicy marinated egg and veggies of your choice!
O MOCHI DONUT
Next, we were ready for something sweet! We stopped at O Mochi for a mochi donut
- Looks pretty, visually appealing
- Flavour was plain, but texture of mochi was delightfully chewy
- Sugar coating provides sweet crunch and texture contrast
- Combining popular TikTok foods – mochi donuts and tanghulu (Chinese candied fruit)
Here’s how Hela Spice would do it:
Keeping with the fusion, we’d take a yeasted mochi dough and combine with Swedish kardemummbullar to make a delicious donut or morning bun! Keep the candied sugar coating for a sweet crunchy initial bite and maybe look at adding different sugar and spice combinations like a cinnamon/ brown sugar coating.
O MOCHI DRINK
What a great pairing, a mochi donut with a purple ube and coconut white chocolate crack drink.
- Ube drink with cup lined with white chocolate. Consumer squeezes the cup to reveal beautiful purple ube drink.
- Good flavour overall, coconut was stronger than the ube.
- There was a fatty component to the drink that coated the pallet.
Here’s how Hela Spice would add to it:
Taking inspiration from the coconut and ube we’d look at a line extension and create an instant coconut and ube latte.
KOOL-AID CHICKEN
As we continued to walk the pavilion, we saw the Kool-Aid fried chicken and knew we had to try it.
- Sweet Cherry Kool-Aid based sauce – no actual Kool-Aid used to marinate chicken
- Cherry Kool-Aid sauce added pop of fruity acidity
- Lost robust flavour once past the coating on outside of the chicken
Here’s how Hela Spice would make this product:
To really help drive that sweet and tangy Kool-Aid flavour, we would brine the chicken with a Kool-Aid infused brine then top with the Kool-Aid infused sauce
COOKIE-CROISSANT FRIED CHICKEN SANDWICH
While at the Kool-Aid Fried Chicken booth, we saw they were offering a croissant-cookie hybrid fried chicken sandwich and it looked like something we had to try.
- Croissant dry and stale. Crumbling in hands. Needs fresh croissant, but understandable issue based on providing hundreds of sandwiches an hour.
- Cookies undercooked. Dough on bottom raw.
- Just chocolate sauce on chicken.
- Looks so much better in photos.
- Item was lacking in sweet and savoury balance, could use more salt.
Here’s how Hela Spice could improve it:
Instead of the chocolate syrup, coat the chicken in a sweet and savoury cocoa infused seasoning. It would drive home more of the sweet and salty flavour notes and make the flavours come out more and be easier to eat.
TACO BOMB
By this time, our hunger was starting to wane, then we walked by the birria taco bombs and had to try them.
- Slow cooked beef mixed with cheese and fried into a birria inspired bomb served with birria consommé.
- The bomb itself didn’t carry too much Mexican flavour, but the consommé had plenty of flavour.
- Beef used was very tender.
Here’s how Hela Spice would do it:
By mixing a seasoning through the meat and cheese it would help to reinforce the birria flavour throughout. We would also coat the balls in a tortilla chip crumb to make it even more craveable.
MAC AND CHEESE POPSICLE
When we saw people walking around eating what looked like a deep-fried popsicle coated in cheese, we went searching!
- Deep fried mac and cheese on a stick, with melted cheese on top and served with a cheese sauce.
- Flavour was good, very cheesy.
- Was expecting a frozen dessert, but was pleasantly surprised that it was hot.
Here’s how Hela Spice could add a twist to it:
By adding an acidic and spicy pickled jalapeno it would help to lighten up the richness of the product and cut through all of the heavy cheese on cheese interaction.
WASABI ICE CREAM CONE
After all that fried chicken, we were ready for a pallet cleanser.
- Wasabi flavoured soft served ice cream
- Nice balance of sweetness and spicy retro nasal heat from the wasabi
- Great execution on a crazy concept.
How Hela Spice would do it:
Exactly like this, it was great!
LUCKY CHICKEN
After a short break from all the eating we tried to walk it off. Then we saw something different we had to taste, Lucky chicken.
- Variety of breakfast cereal and potato chip coated chicken tenders served with a chocolate infused ketchup.
- Chocolate ketchup was not good.
- Cereal and chips were a good coating, offered good crunch and fruity pebbles were a surprise hit.
- Great product concept, just lacking in finishing it off completely
Here’s how Hela Spice would do it:
Amp up the flavour of the potato chip crusted chicken by adding snack seasonings as topical. Improve the chocolate ketchup by making a Mexican mole inspired ketchup.
SPAM TOTS
When we heard about and then saw the SPAM tots, we knew it was a must.
- Standard ‘tater tots with fried julienne SPAM, fried rice balls and a spicy mayo sauce.
- Overall, a good execution, but nothing too inventive.
- Was expecting SPAM to be made into a tot.
Here’s how Hela Spice would do it:
By combining the shredded potato with shredded SPAM we would make a true SPAM tot!
TZATZIKI CHEESECAKE
We heard about the tzatziki cheesecake and it sounded odd enough that it must be good if it was being shown at the Ex!
- Regular sweet cheesecake with the flavours of tzatziki added in the frosting.
- A bit disappointing that the tzatziki flavour was only in frosting.
Here’s how Hela Spice would improve on it:
Really lean into the idea of a savoury cheesecake flavoured with garlic, cucumber and dill. By making them a bite sized tart they would be a perfect canape or appetizer.
UBE STREET CORN
The amazing purple colour of this ube street corn had us wondering if it tasted as good as it looked.
- Ube infused butter spread on corn then finished with a Mexican Filipino fusion of toppings including cheese, green onion, and sesame seeds
- Impressive visuals
- Flavour was great, but overall ube did not come through
Here’s how Hela Spice would do it:
- Keeping with the corn on the cob, just boost the Ube flavour so that it survives into the mouth so that the taste matches the visuals
- Secondly, rather than an on the cob corn experience, we think you could get more ube flavour from an ube street corn fritter
DEEP FRIED DILL PICKLE OREOS
Pickles and oreos? Not a natural flavour combination, but of course we had to try it.
- Oreos with a slice of dill pickle sandwiched in between then served with a pickle infused sauce
- Combination of acidic pickle and sweet cookie was surprisingly quite good
Here’s how Hela Spice could do it:
Rather than a deep-fried Oreo, we think a sandwich cookie with a sweet pickle frosting would be amazing!
FRIED CHEESE CURDS (TAYLOR’S VERSION)
With all the Era’s tour hype we knew that the Swifties would want us to try these.
- Battered and fried cheese curds smothered in a sweet icing and topped with lavender flavoured sprinkles
- Nice combination of sweet and savoury with a pleasant hint of floral flavour from the lavender
- Visually appealing
Here’s how Hela Spice would improve this to make more Swifties happy:
We would take this to another level by battering the cheese curds in a vanilla cake batter and topping with a salted caramel sauce.
WHY SHOULD YOU WORK WITH HELA SPICE?
- R&D Team experienced in many different product categories
- Ability to create products based on customers’ ideas
- Ability to bring new product ideas and fully developed concepts for customer review
- Real plant production experience that enables Hela Spice to create an easy to produce system of blends and raw materials including processing instructions, to make processing simple for companies
- We can adapt procedures to best utilize available plant processing equipment
Have a product idea? Tell us all about it and your search for the perfect ingredients. Find it all at Hela Spice. Let’s talk about your next best-seller.
