Fair food is overrated

A lot of the food is horrible. And such large portions!

That’s about the right size.

I do not understand is why people go to the Fair and queue up at the hamburger stand. I often think this as I am in the queue at the hamburger stand.

After all, there’s so much more to eat. Corn dogs, for example. A low-flavor tube of minced abattoir sweepings, dipped in batter, plunged in oil, and served on a stick with a sharp point on the end. When you get to the last few bites, you either have to shimmy the butt of the corn dog up the skewer,  or sword-swallow the thing so the sharp point spears your soft palate. Condiments? Why, yes - a smear of ketchup, or a smear of mustard, or, if you’re one of those people who believe in grabbing life by the lapels and shouting give me all you got, you have both.

Never in my life have I ever thought “I could go for a Corn Dog right about now,” but put me at the Fair and I have to eat one within five minutes of entering the grounds. It’s like the pistol shot that starts a race, and, like a bullet,  goes through you just as fast.

It’s the same with mini-donuts. When I was doing the trivia contest at the newspaper stage, one of the questions was “how many mini-donuts can you eat before you are overcome with self-loathing?” The answer varies, I suppose, according to how much pre-existing self-loathing you bring to the job. Maybe you’re already hating yourself for eating a Sweet Martha’s bucket of cookies, a popular item at the fair. It has a handle so you can amble around as you eat. One of these years I expect it will come with a yoke and a spring-loaded tab that pops them in your you at present intervals, for hands-free consumption.  My friends, a bucket of cookies is to personal girth management as a cup of quarters at a casino is to financial planning.

This year’s hot new item is “deep fried ranch dressing,” which seems impossible, like “sugar-dusted humidity on a stick.” How do they do that? Just pour the ranch in the roiling oil and and scoop out a globule?

“Well, first you shape the dressing into patties, then - ”

Wait, no, you cannot shape dressing. It defies your attempts to give it form, unless you’ve added a thickening element. (Of course, everything they serve at the Fair is a thickening element,  in a sense.) It’s supposed to be delicious, but I wouldn’t eat one without first unbuttoning my shirt and smearing conducting gel on my chest, just to save time. Maybe even draw a dotted line on my sternum.

Every year there’s an outrageous item like deep-fried ranch dressing - I think last year it was an IV of caramel syrup hooked directly into your carotid artery; the year before, poutine banana splits - but there’s also a high-status item. It flatters the adventurous and gives them something to talk about at the book club:” oh we love the Fair, the Fine Arts booth, the animals, history center, and you know the food has gotten so good. We had  braised llama thyroids on wild rice - it’s fusion Peruvian - and Cal had the larks tongues a la Fripp with a red chili fondant. Of course we were both throwing up all night, but the Fair’s just once a year and one does get tired of heaving up the same old dishes, you know?”

Bottom line: I am cheap and have boring tastes. When I go to the Fair I’m usually working (not this year, as it turns out, because [insert ornate and baroque recitation of Anglo-Saxon vulgarities] and I don’t want to spend $17 on breaded alligator strips. And so, I am ashamed to say, I have a hamburger.

The line is long but it moves briskly. The burgers are small and they’re good. There’s a pail of fresh onions. You pair that with a cup of the fries from the very good French Fry stand - the place where an army of sweaty teens labor in a miasma of aerated grease like Vulcan’s minions - and you have a good Fair meal. But it needs dessert.

You could wander over to the Bucket of Cookies place and ask for one (1) cookie, and have them laugh at you as if you’d gone to Dominos and requested a pizza the size of a quarter, or you could go to the single cookie stand and ask if they have any size smaller than a manhole cover that doesn’t have a layer of frosting thicker than the sedimentary layer of an entire geological era. They, too, would look askance: first time at the Fair?

I know, I know, it sounds as if I actually don’t like Fair food. I do! It’s just the least important part of the trip. If I could just have buy small Corn Dog and one Mini Donut and a container of fries smaller than Seabiscuit’s feedbag and maybe just one braised llama thyroid on a toothpick and a nugget of deep-fried ranch dressing the size of a thimble, and pay for it with a picture of President Grant and have Jefferson, Hamilton, and Honest Abe left over, that would be grand. Perhaps I should open a stand next year. Not all you can eat. Just all you should.