Want to eat at the New York State Fair? Good, let’s review some of your options.
Scotty’s Tater Twisters and The Pickle Factory
Tater Twisters are thinly sliced spiraled potatoes on a stick with an option of flavors. While it’s not easily seen in the photo, the savory flavors include Ketchup, Dill Pickle, Buffalo Wing, and Strawberry Cheesecake. There’s a list of sweet flavors, which appears to be missing Strawberry Cheesecake. They can borrow a dill pickle flavor from their neighbor, who also deep fry their pickles.
Of course, there’s a Pickle Rick. It doesn’t matter that The Pickle Factory already has a mascot, which might be The Pickle King with a pickle scepter, who is there to remind you that “You Can’t Buy Happiness, BUT You CAN Buy Pickles.” This guy speaks like Ric Flair tweets. The Pickle King is not Scotty Smith, who is the Scotty in Scotty’s Tater Twists. Perhaps the Pickle King’s domain is the factory where pickles are made? Why is the Pickle King sentient when the barrels of pickles behind him appear to be vegetative? I have a long list of questions about this monarch.
Maddi’s Pickle Lemonade
What is going on with food eating/drinking itself? The pickle gives a pretty enthusiastic thumbs up and a big ol’ grin, but I have concerns about that lemon. What is that lemon drinking? If that’s lemonade, where did it come from, and why is he winking and smiling at me? Furthermore, if that’s lemonade, how does it become pickle lemonade? Is that why the pickle’s cheeks are rosy? Pickle lemonade is served with a pickle spear. This is unholy.
Stix & Things
There are too many things on stix.
Mmm… Mac & Cheese
Call me a purist when it comes to Cheetos, but a “sprinkle of Cheetos” would indicate that they’re sprinkling the Cheetos snacks over the top of the mac and cheese and not the dust, as the sign would imply. For the Cheetos uneducated, the dust is called “Cheetle.”
The Awesome Blooming Onion
The word “Awesome” and the G in blooming are doing a lot of tag team work to avoid lawsuits from two different restaurant chains. This doesn’t technically violate the trademarks of the Awesome Blossom or the Bloomin’ Onion, but it’s playing fast and loose with them both. I also imagine that the word “Awesome” is doing a lot of work in general. I didn’t see any Big Macchiatos, a combination of coffee drink and burger, but it would be at the state fair sometime soon.
Jim’s Fries
I’ll be honest, this booth terrified me. I like french fries, but there is too many french fries on display at once and I didn’t even photograph the entire thing. While people know the quote, “My tastes are very… singular” from 50 Shades of Grey, Jim could be the originator of it. While you could get things like pierogies, wings, or chicken fingers, can you get a bucket of them? Highly unlikely.
Deep Fried Tacos
“Fuck it, we’ll deep fry the tacos.” This is the stand where I ordered my lunch, but when I approached the stand I chickened out of ordering the deep fried tacos. After a few days of eating poorly, I imagined that this would be the food item that would push me over the edge, beyond “I don’t feel well” and into “I shit my pants at the state fair.” I still made a poor decision for food, but still felt I made a better choice than the alternative.
My Mexi-Mac and Cheese “Bowl”
“I”ll take the veggie mac and cheese bowl please.”
“What type of meat?”
“Veggie, no meat”
“It comes with meat”
“I’ll have the veggie bowl”
It went on like that until someone else stepped in and put my order in properly. How did it taste? Like an instant stomach ache.
Bloomin’ Onion, Mexican Street Corn, Jumbo Smoked Turkey Legs
We’ve got a bloomin’ lawsuit on our hands. I think there’s an attempt to connect the idea of turkey legs to Medieval Times with the banner featuring blue brick with stringed flags and faux painted snowflakes? It took me a while to make the connection. You can see a continuation of this theme in the background of the Street Corn and Turkey Legs banner. Secondarily, the way that “FRIED PICKLES” is cavalierly added to the Bloomin’ Onion, it’s enough to make me think that the onion is made out of pickles.
King David’s Gyros
I checked all the kings of Greece, and I didn’t see a single David among them. Furthermore, calling this the “Home of the Original Gyro” is another lie because the first gyro in the United States was supposedly made in George Apostolou in the Parkview Restaurant in Chicago in 1965, pre-dating King David by nine years. Lies.
Big Kahuna’s Greek Gyros
If you thought that “King David” was an odd choice for a peddler of gyros, let me introduce you to Big Kahuna’s. Big Kahuna dates back to the 1950s and has its origins in Hawaiian culture. In this stand, the god of surfing is pictured as a chicken, bringing you chicken gyros.
KiKi’s
While I can’t speak for Kiki’s authenticity, I can at least say they appeared to be the only people serving a gyro who were also trying to look like a stand that would serve a gyro.
BACON
As aggressive as Jim’s Fries was about fries, BACON is just as aggressive about BACON. Can you get it at the fair? They’ll make it with BACON. The biggest question that I have about this is that the sign up front looks like they might have bacon lemonade? What part of the bacon lemonade is “freshly squeezed?” Whoever runs this stand is more modest than the Jim’s and King David’s of the world, letting the BACON do the talking for them. As far as I can tell, the one item on the menu that doesn’t include bacon by default is french fries. No one tell Jim.
Dippin’ Dots
I don’t know when Dippin’ Dots dropped their moniker “The ice cream of the future,” but I think that they have decided that this is the future, and this is our ice cream. We were promised jet packs, we got tiny balls of ice cream.
Normant’s Salt Water Taffy
The nearest body of saltwater to Syracuse is the Atlantic Ocean. Salt water taffy sucks, no offense to Normant.
Intense Milk
I’ve only ever seen Intense Milk in vending machines at the State Fair. Their website states, “Intense Milk is more than a milk beverage. It’s an intensely indulgent experience packed with flavor and tastes like a melted milkshake.” The vending machines were only in the buildings that housed farm animals. Intense.
Bacon Bomb
If you look closely at the imagery on the truck, it’s a pig, smoking a cigar and wearing an aviator flying hat, parachuting down onto America, specifically onto Route 66. This pig is the bacon bomb, and he appears to be very pleased with this. I think the less we think about this, the better.
Deep Fried
This is what’s normally associated with the State Fair. I want to know what the original Triple By-Pass, The Stroke, or the Flatliner menu items used to be. Outside of that, it seemed like the usual fair from the fried food truck with nothing overly innovative.
Villa Pizze Fritte
This is a State Fair tradition, and it’s a good one, according to my spouse. This is fried pizza dough (although they say it’s not) sold in lengths measured in feet. We left the fair with ten feet of Pizze Fritte.