The real star attraction at the N.D. State Fair
By CHRIS BIERI, Staff Writer cbieri@minotdailynews.comThe rides and carnival games at the North Dakota State Fair are a lot of fun.
The exhibits are interesting and the musical acts can certainly be entertaining.
But we all know what the star of the show is at the fair - the food.
That being the case, it would be downright criminal not to give the star its time in the spotlight.
But sifting through all the cobs of corn, cotton candy and Indian tacos is far too big a job for just one person (unless that person is Joey Chesnutt).
So I enlisted the help of sports editor Michael Linnell to help me on a journey to not only sample some of the fair's finest morsels, but hopefully identify the ultimate fair food.
We arrived at the fair shortly before 3 p.m. Tuesday and quickly went to work. How quickly you ask?
Well, we didn't even get past the first food booth before making a purchase.
Our first sampling was the chicken and vegetable lo mein with authentic Dakota buckwheat noodles. To wash it down, we got a fresh-squeezed lemonade, a popular choice among fair-goers. Right next door, a couple of kids were enjoying fruit smoothies in what appeared to be a beaker right out of a high school science laboratory.
We only made it a few stands further before deciding it was time to indulge in some foreign flavors.
Gyros are a Greek favorite, usually made with lamb. We tried a chicken gyro, topped with onions and tzatziki, a tangy yogurt sauce.
For those of you who had 3:12 p.m. in the "first time Bieri spills on himself pool," you my friends, are winners. That was the exact time the tzatziki craftily escaped from the gyro and found its way onto my shirt.
Please send a self-addressed stamped envelope to The Minot Daily News and we will send you your prize. For a beverage choice, Linnell grabbed a cherry limeade. It was good, but we both agreed it needed to be a little limeadier.
Feeling our iron level was reaching a dangerously low level, we decided it was time for some red meat.
Linnell waited in line to order a barbeque beef sandwich, but the line proved to be too long, forcing us to go to a back-up plan.
That back-up plan was to go to a staple of fair fare - fried food. They'll fry anything at the fair. Aside from the standards like fried doughs, fries and onion rings, recently stands have popped up that fry candy bars and Oreos. I even saw one kid buy a caramel apple, take it over to another stand, and have it fried. All right, I might have made that one up.
We split an order of cheese curds with Linnell careful to select the curds that weren't drowning in a sea of ketchup.
We had sampled one classic variety of fair food, now it was time to try another - food on a stick.
Like the fried foods, there isn't much you can't get on a stick. Chicken on a stick, walleye on a stick, head of iceberg lettuce on a stick (another slight exaggeration).
Linnell wanted to give the shrimp on a stick a try, but it was apparently a pretty popular selection and had been sold out.
So we went for the original food on a stick - the corndog. We'd had our fill of savory selections and needed to complete our journey with something sweet.
We went with an old standby - ice cream. We stopped at a spot that offered 19 different soft-serve flavors. It took me almost as long to decide on a flavor as it did to eat the cone.
So what is the ultimate fair food? In my informal straw poll, there were votes for nearly every type of fair fare.
As hot as it was on Tuesday, Hawaiian shaved ice was probably the most popular.
But there are only a few delicacies that have reached iconic status in the realm of fair food.
The envelope please. And winner is ... the corndog. It has it all - a long tradition and a variety of flavors and textures. Not only is it fried, but it comes on a stick. The perfect food? Maybe not, but definitely the perfect fair food.
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berylj
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07-23-08 8:22 AM
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Trivia but...the first corn dog franchise in Minot was a small stand on main street (mid forties?) above Thomas Funeral Home; run by a WWII vet, according to my dad who took my sister and I to try "the new treat" on a stick. Probably he also wanted to to support the returning vet. "Corn Dog" then, tasted a little like a very yellow pancake embracing a wiener, but maybe the flavor has improved. Also I read no referance to Pineapple Whips, my favorite treat from the State Fair some years ago. And another trivia footnote: preceding the infamous "Dairy Queen, was the Whirl-a-Whip, also the first 'establishment' was a stand across from Roosevelt Park, run by another married vet raising a family and getting his advanced education at MST on the GI bill; all at the same time....so much for morning nostalgia; so much for a momentary time warp...
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