14 September 26 - OctOber 2, 2024 dallasobserver.com DALLAS OBSERVER Classified | MusiC | dish | Culture | unfair Park | Contents Fryer Tuck In A guide to the best classic foods at the State Fair, Big Tex Choice Award winners and hidden gems. BY LAUREN DREWES DANIELS AND LESLIE CHATMAN T he State Fair of Texas opened in 1886, and a lot has happened over that time. There are some foods that every fairgoer should try, but given the ever-evolving menu of options — like cotton candy bacon on a stick — knowing where to start your gastronomic journey is puzzling. Let us guide you. First, we break it down into categories: Fair Classics that everyone should try; Big Texas Choice Award All-Stars, the big hit- ters that keep on hittin’; Hidden Gems, places off the beaten path that only insiders know about; and finally, new foods. Get your big walkin’ shoes on and let’s stuff our faces. Classics Every Fairgoer Should Try Fletcher’s Original Corny Dogs There’s debate over who actually “invented” the corn dog but Fletcher’s definitely made it popular. Founders Neil and Carl Fletcher started making corn dogs at their stand in 1942. Fairgoers typically consume around 600,000 corny dogs in 24 days. That’s more than 24,000 a day. Clearly, this is a staple not to be missed. The only question is are your a ketchup or mustard person. Fletcher’s has at least half a dozen orange and yellow stands around the fairgrounds. Fernie’s Funnel Cakes Wanda “Fernie” Winter started working at the fair in 1969 but it wasn’t until a trip to Branson, Missouri, in 1980 that she tried a funnel cake and brought it back to the fair. It’s been a hit there ever since. You’re liter- ally not doing the fair right if you don’t get a Fernie’s Funnel Cake. Fernie’s has five stands around the fairgrounds, but if you want to sit down, go to the Embarcadero Building. Deep-Fried Butter Abel Gonzales, “Fried Jesus,” broke the fried-food fourth wall with deep-fried but- ter in 2009. A dollop of frozen butter (that’s key, the butter has to start frozen) is dipped in a butter batter, deep fried to a nice golden brown and topped with a light glaze. You might need a defibrillator later, but it’s 100% worth it. Find Deep-Fried Butter along Nim- itz and along the Midway. Turkey Leg from Smokey John’s Smokey John’s barbecue restaurant on Mockingbird Lane draws diners year-round, which lends to the authen- ticity of this smoked bird leg. Elevate this feast by having the leg dipped in their warm house- made barbecue sauce. Go on, now: dip the whole thing in there. There are four Smokey John’s locations: the Midway, Cotton Bowl Plaza, the Tower Building and Nimitz. Deep-Fried Oreo Rick and Tammy Stiffler, operators of New- port Concessions, had their first date at the State Fair more than 40 years ago. These days, they pass the time at the fair selling more than 75,000 deep-fried Oreos every year. The secret, they say, is the Double Stuf Oreo variety, which takes a bath in a thick batter before a swim in the fryer. This is a mouthful of First-Team All-American de- bauchery. Stand up and clap, people! Find the Stifflers’ Sweet Spot along the Midway and Nimitz. Big Tex Choice Award All-Stars Cotton Candy Bacon on a Stick This was the 2024 Big Tex Choice Award Winner for best sweet and it’s already leg- end. This will be the fair food everyone talks about this year. A lot of “Hey, where did you get that?” It’s bacon on a stick that takes a swirl through a cotton candy ma- chine (genius) and then they torch the pink puff so that it caramelizes to the meat. The craziest thing here is how thick the bacon is. And even crazier is how addictive it is. Find these at the Magnolia Beer Garden, in the Tower Building and in the Cotton Bowl Plaza. Deep-Fried Cheesy Crab Tater Bites Minced crab meat is blended with potato, cheese and spices, fried to a golden brown and served with a cheesy Cajun sauce that has a base of on- ions, bell peppers and celery (think gumbo). A sprinkle of Cajun spices is added along with the fi- nal touch of crawfish. Find these in the Magnolia Beer Garden and at Cajun Cowboy near Big Tex. day, reaching as high as 18,000 on some days. She has three pairs of shoes for the fair, which she rotates out each day to “let ‘em breathe.” “I never wear the same pair of shoes two days in a row,” she says. “and I buy very good shoes and my feet never hurt. Now, my back hurts, but never my feet.” The Weight of the Fair A nd everything is more complicated depending on the day. It could be a rainy, Texas-OU weekend, slow or busy. Fluctuations in attendance can throw the most well-thought-out inventory plan out the window. “I think on the first day of the fair, I ordered 10 boxes of bread,” Cheyne says. “And I went through that before two in the afternoon. So that was a big, big eye-opener for me.” Cheyne, who doesn’t have a scooter, lost a lot of weight last year from going nonstop, rarely taking the time to sit down and eat. She’s making it a point this year to focus on hiring more employees so she can step away from her stand more often, take a break, eat a meal, and yeah, do inventory. She’s also put on some extra weight like a bear readying for hibernation after losing more than 20 pounds last year. So, do concessionaires eat fair food all day every day? Jo- sey says not a lot, but enough so that by the end of the first week she just wants to eat a whole head of lettuce. But she will grab a grilled cheese sandwich from her sister’s booth. Other than that, Josey says they don’t have time to stand in lines, “We have 24 days. We don’t get any more days than that, so we have to keep moving.” Cheyne prefers sandos from the Sandiotchi stand near hers, and she’ll grab one of her mom’s burgers because, she says, they’re still some of the best she’s ever had “and I’m not just saying that.” She has other go-to’s like a banh mi brisket sandwich with fresh sliced jalapeños, cucumbers and carrot slices, “It’s just really refreshing after you’ve been out there all day.” Bailey’s Black Eyed Pea Soup is another form of sus- tenance she likes that other fair insiders have told us about. For Mom, Tami, staying fueled is a little more rudimen- tary and, perhaps, on-brand for the fair. “Some days I start with Cheetos and a Coke,” she says, “and some days with a cheeseburger and then maybe later in the day, I might grab a few french fries. It’s a great fair diet. It’s the only time of year I lose weight.” As the day gets closer to the 10 p.m. closing time, it’s time to tally up the daily sales. Fairgoers use small paper coupons to buy food and each stand has a safe (called “cans”) to col- lect the tickets. At night the cans are taken to a scale and weighed to see how much money they made, an archaic ac- counting method in a time of tap-and-go digital payments. For Tami, she goes home not long after the closing bell rings and, luckily, she lives close enough to sleep at home. Some stand operators, especially those from out of town, sleep in a trailer in an adjacent reserved lot and don’t leave the fairgrounds for the duration. Cheyne, still a newbie in the life of the fair, stays closer to midnight most nights. When she’s short on sleep, she likes to sneak over to the massage chairs in the Mattress Firm show- room for a little rest. This year she’s looking forward to a new menu of deviled eggs a few stands down in the Tower Building to help her power through. It beats her mom’s Cheetos and Coke, but then again, it seems to be working well for her, still hustling at the fair since flipping burgers for Dad five decades ago. Christopher Durbin Cheyne Mayes Hickey and daughter at the Stay Cheesey stand. | CITY OF ATE | t Dish State Fair of Texas Fletcher’s Original Corny Dogs makes our classics not-to-miss list. State Fair of Texas Cotton Candy Bacon on a stick City of Ate from p13
