Taste of Sask. expects to crush attendance record this year

Deep fried Mars bars and alligator is just some of the options at the 22nd annual Taste of Saskatchewan.

The six-day event, which features 30 restaurants, started beating attendance records on day one Tuesday at Kiwanis Park in downtown Saskatoon.

“There’s an awesome assortment of many types of food,” said Scott Ford, who’s in charge of the event put on by SaskTel Centre. “It’s a great shopping experience to try so many different items.”

Ford said more than 80,000 people came the first four days, and they on track to see 120,000 people when it wraps up Sunday–the previous record was around 110,000 people.

Boss of @TasteofSask Scott Ford from @SaskTelCtr talks about the record breaking crowds #yxe pic.twitter.com/q9rLbrPvIm

— JT Marshall (@jtmarshallCKOM) July 15, 2017

Wing World has set up shop at Taste for the last 10 years and is home to the popular deep fried Mars bar.

“A lot of people just come to Taste for the Mars bar, which makes us blush,” said owner Paula Nowakowski.  “What’s better than deep fried chocolate.”

Nowakowski said with the 30-degree temperatures for most of the festival her work space is ridiculously hot.

“We have so many fryers in the tent people come walking up and say ‘Wow that’s hot’,” she said.

Taste of Saskatchewan runs until 8 p.m. Sunday.

Part of the entertainment for the closing day is water-ski races put on by the Western Canadian Watercross Association.

Steve Chestolowski #wcwa jet ski races in #yxe it continues tomorrow at 10:30 a.m. pic.twitter.com/DWM9XyUhZo

— JT Marshall (@jtmarshallCKOM) July 15, 2017