Canada's Knockoff Cronut Burger Made a Bunch of People Horribly Sick
Canadian foodies may have taken the cronut craze a touch too far: Several people were hospitalized on Tuesday after eating a cronut burger, a collaboration of two Toronto restaurants that was created expressly for the Canadian National Exhibition.
.Canadian foodies may have taken the cronut craze a touch too far: Several people were hospitalized on Tuesday after eating a cronut burger, a collaboration of two Toronto restaurants that was created expressly for the Canadian National Exhibition.
Call this the Canadian version of state fair food gone horribly, horribly wrong. On Tuesday evening, paramedics attended to 12 people at the CNE who ate fair food and began suffering from symptoms including vomiting, diarrhea and stomach pain. (5 of the twelve were taken to a local hospital.) Although officials have not publicly fingered the cronut burger as the guilty party, a Toronto Public Health spokesperson told the Toronto Star's Alex Nino Gheclu that the one restaurant that offered the cronut burger, Epic Burgers and Waffles, has been closed down by the CNE for inspection. (The Globe and Mail informed Dominique Ansel Bakery, the NYC-based source of the original cronut, about the Toronto knockoff and the intention to burger-fy it before the festival began. They did not seem pleased.) Social media also offered some clues, with a number of people reporting symptoms of food poisoning -- and fingering the cronut burger as the culprit -- on Twitter:
Take back what I said about the cronut burger. Don't do it. I puked 7 times last night.
— anupa mistry (@_anupa) August 21, 2013
Yup food poisoning...cronut burger lmao... I believe over 100+ ppl going to be sick
— Kuya Blacks (@Cc_rRafael) August 21, 2013
Was definitely one of those people with #foodpoisoning after eating a #cronutburger from #epicburgers at the #cne #toronto. Don't do it!
— Syl & Sam of L&B (@lipgloss_black) August 21, 2013
Family got food poisoning after eating at the CNE had Cronut burger, lobster roll, tiny tims. :-( @LetsGoToTheEX might want check.
— Ryan White (@ryantology) August 21, 2013
Another person says his wife, but not him, was sick after Cronut burger, seafood chowder fries, ice cream waffle and a smoothie at the CNE
— Trevor Dunn (@trevorjdunn) August 21, 2013
Ah ha! So it was Epic Burger, with the cronut burger, in the fairgrounds.
To be fair, the cronut burger was actually a combination effort between Epic Burgers and Waffles and Le Dolci, a bakery in Toronto's trendy Queen West district that started serving a cronut knockoff earlier this summer. The combined effort between the two restaurants was, so far as we know, the first time anyone has combined a knockoff cronut with a burger patty. Naturally, the concoction was supposed to be one of the hottest food offerings of the CNE. No more. As one observer on Twitter put it:
NYC's cronut has lineups at the bakery, Toronto's cronut burger has lineups at the ER. … That got real dark real fast
— Claire Kerr (@snotforprofit) August 21, 2013