Norfolk County Fair introduces globally inspired foods

Lexi tries tanghulu at the 2024 Norfolk County Fair & Horse Show.

Chris Abbott

Editor

Some favourite food vendors have been coming to the Norfolk County Fair for “decades and decades” – look for them again Oct. 7-13 at the 2025 Fair - but there are also new food concessions among their amazing 50-plus options, including globally inspired foods like tanghulu.

“We’re having a great time, the weather is amazing and the turnout is pretty good, I’d say,” said Gary Wu, owner of Super Crunch Tanghulu at the 2024 Norfolk County Fair.

Tanghulu is skewered fruit, dipped into a clear syrupy coating.

“All the kids know it, it’s huge on social media,” said Wu, a first-time vendor at last year’s fair. “A lot of our customers tell us they tried making it, but were not successful. I understand, because it is really hard to make. I had to practice for a couple months to finally get it.”

After water-and-sugar is boiled to the right temperature, they can start dipping the fresh fruit.

“The timing is critical because it can turn to caramel easily. People want sweet, but they don’t want too much sweet – you don’t want any residual sugar. Also, if it’s not boiled long enough it’s soft, it’s sticky, not crunchy. At the right temperature, it turns into this very shiny, transparent coating.

“Our name is Super Crunch… we can’t have sticky candy,” he added with a smile.

2024 was their first year of touring festivals and fairs across Ontario.

“We have a mall (kiosk) store in Ottawa, Super Crunch Tanghulu, that’s our base now, and we’ve been doing festivals all summer. This year (2024) we did over 70 festivals, from Cornwall to London (including the Taste of Asia festival in Markham where the Prime Minister sampled the tanghulu). We have four teams in GTA, two in Ottawa, one in London – at the peak this summer, we had 40 people in the company.”

In 2025, they were at the Calgary Stampede – the photos are on Instagram @supercrunchtanghulu.

“This product has a long history, probably a couple hundred years,” said Wu. “It was invented in China back when there were emperors… and now it’s popular all over Asia, all over the place. I’ve heard there are hundreds of these stores in South Korea. It’s popular in Japan, too.”

In Ontario, Super Crunch Tanghulu added its own twist to the traditional Chinese street food.

“This product is usually only sold in the winter. It’s not a summer treat, it’s a winter treat. The reason being, the sugar melts very quickly in the summer. Secondly, it tastes better in the winter because the fruit is cold. The outdoor ambient temperature, it naturally cools down the candy.”

“Where we have innovated, we are selling this in the summer, especially at festivals. It works at festivals because it sells quickly.”They are not using freezers – all of their tanghulu is made fresh on-site.

“This stuff will melt in half an hour, guaranteed. Honestly, in China, I would say you can’t find this in the summer. It’s always been a winter thing.”

Tanghulu is also typically a single-fruit design, he said. Super Crunch likes to make their own fruit combinations.

“We started off selling just two types of sticks, one all grapes, one all strawberries, for $10. I ran into a problem. Everybody was buying the strawberries, nobody was buying the grapes… so I had a full table full of grapes. The solution was, why not put them together, strawberries AND grapes. Now, this is our No. 1 most popular. We definitely did not invent this product, but I would say we came up with this design, the strawberry-grape thing. I have not seen it anywhere else. And from this design, we branched out into other fruits. Now you see the clementines, too. The pineapples, blueberries. Marshmallows. It’s about variety, right?”

Tanghulu offers fair-goers a sweet dessert, said Wu, something different from popular fried foods.

“I think it’s nice to have something that is fresh produce based. Our fruit… you can see it is all premium stuff. They are not the little strawberries or grapes, we only source Grade A fruit. I think that is important.”

A former project manager on construction projects, Wu says he loves his new business. 

“I used to be a project manager on construction projects. I quit my job, now I’m doing this full-time. It’s been a big change!” he laughed. “It’s awesome.”