State Fair of Texas
My wife and I went to the State Fair of Texas on Tuesday night. We ate many strange fried things, rode the Ferris wheel, and pet a lot of cute little animals.
Except that we'd never ridden the Ferris wheel there before (it's called the Texas Star). I'm pretty sure it's the biggest functional Ferris wheel between London and the Far East. Granted, it's really not that exciting, though the heights are enough to wig me out and the view is pretty phenomenal.
In our quest to try strange fried food, we had:
Deep Fried Cactus Bites - slices of prickly pear pads (nopalitos), battered and deep fried. We'd had nopalitos before, as they're more common in Arizona, but we hadn't had them batter fried. They had a slightly pickled flavor and were a little spicy (from the batter and dipping sauce, as the pads are not spicy at all on their own). They came with an excellent spicy-sweet creamy dipping sauce. Very tasty, although, for the price ($6) the portion size was disappointingly small. I expect fair food to be overpriced, sure, but I don't remember the portion sizes being so tiny at state fairs in the past. That trend, it seems, would continue through several other food offerings.
Deep Fried Chicken and Waffles on a stick - Also $6, this was about the size of a single chicken tender (and not a big one). It was battered with waffle batter, deep fried, sprinkled with powdered sugar and served with a side of syrup. It tasted great - very reminiscent of other chicken and waffles I'd had before. As good as it was, though, I felt like it was a pretty lousy value for the money.
Fried Bacon Cinnamon Roll on a stick - Another $6 entry in the food race (that seemed to be a pretty popular price point). This was a cinnamon roll with crumbled bacon mixed in, fried, glazed, and dusted with powdered sugar. I do happen to really like the combination of bacon with sweets, and I thought this cinnamon roll tasted great. On the down side, it was also pretty small. I had to compare this to Gourdough's maple bacon doughnut, called the Flying Pig. Gourdough's donuts are about 5-6 times the size of this cinnamon roll. The maple bacon doughnut is topped with several whole slices of bacon. It's hard to compare whole slices to crumbles, but that's got to be about 20-30 times as much bacon as this cinnamon roll had. Sure the Flying Pig is bigger and better, but how does the price compare? Well, it's $5.50, which also makes it cheaper than this cinnamon roll. I expect some extra markup in the price just because something is being sold at the state fair, but too often this year, the portion sizes were disappointingly small. (Oh well, getting a Gourdough's Flying Pig requires a trip to Austin.)
Deep Fried Jambalaya - Winner of the fair's "Best Taste" award for 2012. This item was only $4, which was actually a refreshing change. Given the lower price, I expected a smaller portion, so I wasn't quite as disappointed with its size. It's a little deep-fried ball, about the size of a racquetball, filled with a rice-heavy jambalaya mixture, served with an onion ring encircling it, topped with a spicy sauce. My major disappointment here was in how much of the filling was rice, though the flavor of the filling was quite good, and I did see a tiny chunk of chicken in one of the four bites that made up the whole. Was it worth $1 a bite? Not really. I mean, they weren't even particularly big bites. Overall, the Deep Fried Jambalaya reminded me a lot of the Boudin Balls that I'd had at a local Cajun restaurant. The Boudin Balls were better, and cheaper. I'm just a sucker for trying out deep fried fair food.
Deep Fried Butter - This actually won an award in the past, in a year when we didn't make it to the fair. The notion of deep fried butter, of all things, had intrigued my wife and me ever since. So, even though it didn't necessarily sound good we still wanted to try it. Deep Fried Butter takes the form of four golf-ball sized pretzel-like bread balls. It's $6, but you get four balls, and that didn't seem too bad. You can get this dish with sweet toppings (cherry or cinnamon-sugar, as I recall) or with garlic. We opted for the garlic. The bread ball is actually mostly hollow, and filled with molten butter. This is definitely one of those times when you can eat something and feel your arteries hardening as you swallow. If you love butter, though, (and I do), then these little balls of cardiac doom are absolutely awesome. Deep Fried Butter is one of those rare cases where something done out of sheer stupidity just for the spectacle of it is actually really tasty. (Sorry, Fried Coke and Fried Beer - you failed.)
Deep Fried Fork - Just kidding. Although, I fully expect to see this in next year's competition. Brigette was joking about deep fried cotton candy early on. It wasn't so funny when we found the booth selling it. Then we joked about deep fried biscuits and gravy. We passed that on the way out. Let me refer you to the two rules of Texas State Fair food: 1) if it can be et, it can be deep fried. 2) if it can be deep fried, it can be et. (That's et, as in eaten, if you're not from the South.) I think that pretty much covers all the bases.
Chocolate Covered Bacon - three strips of bacon, covered in a chocolate shell, with candy sprinkles. At $5, this didn't seem too outrageous. And it was darned tasty. As I mentioned before, I do love bacon mixed with sweets.
Yeah, it might seem like we ate a ton of food, but my wife and I split everything we got, and, like I said, the portions were generally tiny. One huge find of the night was Dollar Dogs. We saw a booth that said "Dollar Dogs" and Brig asked if I thought they really had $1 hot dogs. No, I kind of doubted it, but we moseyed over anyway (when at the State Fair of Texas, you do a lot of moseying). And, by jingo, they did have hot dogs for $1. They were the scrappy little hot dogs like we used to get at Wienerschnitzel for a quarter, but considering this was at state fair prices, that seemed like an awesome deal. You got a wiener and a bun and could add your own mustard and/or ketchup. And they were plenty good, if nothing special. If you find yourself at the fair, though, and in need of cheap eats for the family, definitely look for Dollar Dogs near the Old Mill.
We also got a souvenir cup filled with slushy at the Brain Freeze place in the midway. As disposable plastic cups go, it's pretty neat. It's got a screw-on lid and a special pop-top that snaps down over the built-in straw. Seems like a fairly decent design, and suitable for re-use at other events. We got it thinking we'd be able to get it refilled with soda for $2, but we had a heck of a time finding a place that offered $2 refills and actually had soda (most places offering refills only had tea, or so it seemed). If you're looking for soda refills at the fair, they do exist, but they may be hard to find.
The Japanese Lantern Garden looked pretty cool (from what we could see of it), but they were charging $14 per person to get in after dark, and that just wasn't happening for us. We got a nice aerial view from the Ferris wheel and looked over the fence in a couple of spots and felt like we'd seen plenty.
We finished up the night by heading to the barn where you can feed and pet all the cute little animals. I got to pet an alpaca, buffalo, cows, horses, donkeys, camel, emu, zebu, zedonk, zebra, sheep, eland, and some adorable baby goats (also, I fed an ostrich, but I wasn't about to pet it - those things are scary).
Except that we'd never ridden the Ferris wheel there before (it's called the Texas Star). I'm pretty sure it's the biggest functional Ferris wheel between London and the Far East. Granted, it's really not that exciting, though the heights are enough to wig me out and the view is pretty phenomenal.
In our quest to try strange fried food, we had:
Deep Fried Cactus Bites - slices of prickly pear pads (nopalitos), battered and deep fried. We'd had nopalitos before, as they're more common in Arizona, but we hadn't had them batter fried. They had a slightly pickled flavor and were a little spicy (from the batter and dipping sauce, as the pads are not spicy at all on their own). They came with an excellent spicy-sweet creamy dipping sauce. Very tasty, although, for the price ($6) the portion size was disappointingly small. I expect fair food to be overpriced, sure, but I don't remember the portion sizes being so tiny at state fairs in the past. That trend, it seems, would continue through several other food offerings.
Deep Fried Chicken and Waffles on a stick - Also $6, this was about the size of a single chicken tender (and not a big one). It was battered with waffle batter, deep fried, sprinkled with powdered sugar and served with a side of syrup. It tasted great - very reminiscent of other chicken and waffles I'd had before. As good as it was, though, I felt like it was a pretty lousy value for the money.
Fried Bacon Cinnamon Roll on a stick - Another $6 entry in the food race (that seemed to be a pretty popular price point). This was a cinnamon roll with crumbled bacon mixed in, fried, glazed, and dusted with powdered sugar. I do happen to really like the combination of bacon with sweets, and I thought this cinnamon roll tasted great. On the down side, it was also pretty small. I had to compare this to Gourdough's maple bacon doughnut, called the Flying Pig. Gourdough's donuts are about 5-6 times the size of this cinnamon roll. The maple bacon doughnut is topped with several whole slices of bacon. It's hard to compare whole slices to crumbles, but that's got to be about 20-30 times as much bacon as this cinnamon roll had. Sure the Flying Pig is bigger and better, but how does the price compare? Well, it's $5.50, which also makes it cheaper than this cinnamon roll. I expect some extra markup in the price just because something is being sold at the state fair, but too often this year, the portion sizes were disappointingly small. (Oh well, getting a Gourdough's Flying Pig requires a trip to Austin.)
Deep Fried Jambalaya - Winner of the fair's "Best Taste" award for 2012. This item was only $4, which was actually a refreshing change. Given the lower price, I expected a smaller portion, so I wasn't quite as disappointed with its size. It's a little deep-fried ball, about the size of a racquetball, filled with a rice-heavy jambalaya mixture, served with an onion ring encircling it, topped with a spicy sauce. My major disappointment here was in how much of the filling was rice, though the flavor of the filling was quite good, and I did see a tiny chunk of chicken in one of the four bites that made up the whole. Was it worth $1 a bite? Not really. I mean, they weren't even particularly big bites. Overall, the Deep Fried Jambalaya reminded me a lot of the Boudin Balls that I'd had at a local Cajun restaurant. The Boudin Balls were better, and cheaper. I'm just a sucker for trying out deep fried fair food.
Deep Fried Butter - This actually won an award in the past, in a year when we didn't make it to the fair. The notion of deep fried butter, of all things, had intrigued my wife and me ever since. So, even though it didn't necessarily sound good we still wanted to try it. Deep Fried Butter takes the form of four golf-ball sized pretzel-like bread balls. It's $6, but you get four balls, and that didn't seem too bad. You can get this dish with sweet toppings (cherry or cinnamon-sugar, as I recall) or with garlic. We opted for the garlic. The bread ball is actually mostly hollow, and filled with molten butter. This is definitely one of those times when you can eat something and feel your arteries hardening as you swallow. If you love butter, though, (and I do), then these little balls of cardiac doom are absolutely awesome. Deep Fried Butter is one of those rare cases where something done out of sheer stupidity just for the spectacle of it is actually really tasty. (Sorry, Fried Coke and Fried Beer - you failed.)
Deep Fried Fork - Just kidding. Although, I fully expect to see this in next year's competition. Brigette was joking about deep fried cotton candy early on. It wasn't so funny when we found the booth selling it. Then we joked about deep fried biscuits and gravy. We passed that on the way out. Let me refer you to the two rules of Texas State Fair food: 1) if it can be et, it can be deep fried. 2) if it can be deep fried, it can be et. (That's et, as in eaten, if you're not from the South.) I think that pretty much covers all the bases.
Chocolate Covered Bacon - three strips of bacon, covered in a chocolate shell, with candy sprinkles. At $5, this didn't seem too outrageous. And it was darned tasty. As I mentioned before, I do love bacon mixed with sweets.
Yeah, it might seem like we ate a ton of food, but my wife and I split everything we got, and, like I said, the portions were generally tiny. One huge find of the night was Dollar Dogs. We saw a booth that said "Dollar Dogs" and Brig asked if I thought they really had $1 hot dogs. No, I kind of doubted it, but we moseyed over anyway (when at the State Fair of Texas, you do a lot of moseying). And, by jingo, they did have hot dogs for $1. They were the scrappy little hot dogs like we used to get at Wienerschnitzel for a quarter, but considering this was at state fair prices, that seemed like an awesome deal. You got a wiener and a bun and could add your own mustard and/or ketchup. And they were plenty good, if nothing special. If you find yourself at the fair, though, and in need of cheap eats for the family, definitely look for Dollar Dogs near the Old Mill.
We also got a souvenir cup filled with slushy at the Brain Freeze place in the midway. As disposable plastic cups go, it's pretty neat. It's got a screw-on lid and a special pop-top that snaps down over the built-in straw. Seems like a fairly decent design, and suitable for re-use at other events. We got it thinking we'd be able to get it refilled with soda for $2, but we had a heck of a time finding a place that offered $2 refills and actually had soda (most places offering refills only had tea, or so it seemed). If you're looking for soda refills at the fair, they do exist, but they may be hard to find.
The Japanese Lantern Garden looked pretty cool (from what we could see of it), but they were charging $14 per person to get in after dark, and that just wasn't happening for us. We got a nice aerial view from the Ferris wheel and looked over the fence in a couple of spots and felt like we'd seen plenty.
We finished up the night by heading to the barn where you can feed and pet all the cute little animals. I got to pet an alpaca, buffalo, cows, horses, donkeys, camel, emu, zebu, zedonk, zebra, sheep, eland, and some adorable baby goats (also, I fed an ostrich, but I wasn't about to pet it - those things are scary).