The Strangest Fair Foods Ever

There’s a Chinese dish called Ants Climbing a Tree (the “tree branches” are glass noodles; the “ants” are bits of ground pork), and there’s a 1950’s-era kids’ treat called Ants on a Log, made by spreading peanut butter, cream cheese, or some other sticky spread on celery and sprinkling raisins over the top. Don’t be fooled: This time the ants are real. This concoction is made by slathering marshmallow fluff over a large pretzel stick, then rolling it in… actual dead ants, which are said to have a sourish taste.

This is basically a corn dog, made with a pecan-smoked beef and pork sausage and almost as big as an actual canine. It’s fried in a crisp batter, then topped with cheddar and rolled in Flaming Hot Cheetos.

This Texas-size hunk of meat is a two-pound beef rib on a 17-inch bone, slow-smoked and served with smoky or spicy barbecue sauce or garlic sauce.

An actual pizza with a syrupy crust, this pizza is topped with pieces of fried chicken, waffle shards, bacon, mozzarella, and more syrup.

Chicken-fried steak is a specialty of Texas and Oklahoma. But why mess around with a piece of pounded beef when you can chicken-fry smoky, salty bacon?

How do you deep-fry a liquid? Well, actually, modernist wizard chef Ferran Adrià  probably could have managed it — but this Texas version is a bit of a cheat. It isn’t actually the beer that’s deep fried: Beer is injected into ravioli-like pretzel-dough pockets and those are what goes into the oil. Call them alcoholic soup dumplings.

In case you’re wondering how you’d eat bubblegum, deep fried or not, the answer is that you don’t. This isn’t actually bubble gum. It’s a marshmallow dipped in bubblegum-flavored extract, coated in bubblegum-flavored dough, deep fried, and then topped with blue icing and chiclets.

This is another slightly misleading item. Of course, a stick of butter, battered and plunged into bubbling oil, would melt (or explode), so this is actually a ball of buttery dough with a little lake of butter inside, ready to dribble all over the eater’s chin.

The solid ingredients in this soup (chicken, noodles) are compressed, shaped into balls, breaded, and fried. Then they’re impaled on skewers and perforated with small holes into which the broth is piped.

Coffee beans are coffee, right? So technically, if you grind some up with chocolate and form them into balls to be fried, that’s fried coffee. And it’s served in one of those iconic Starbucks cups with — what else? — sugar and whipped cream on the side.

This one’s new for 2019 at this Southern California fair. The dense caramelized-sugar-topped custard is formed into balls and, well, deep fried.

This creation has really made the rounds, appearing not only in L.A. but at fairs in various other parts of California and in Houston and Tucson, among other places. It’s just what it sounds like: shrimp coated in a crust of multi-colored Fruity Pebbles cereal, then deep fried and mounted on a stick or placed on bread to make a po’boy sandwich.

Take a slice of this classic holiday dessert, batter it, put it on a stick, then dip it in hot oil, and this is what you’ve got. A dusting of powdered sugar is added, just to make sure it’s sweet enough.

Some people like pickles and/or pickle relish on their hot dogs. This creation puts the pickle inside the hot dog instead. A wiener is hollowed out, a dill pickle is inserted, then the dog is dipped in batter and fried to a golden-brown. As with all corn dogs, of course, it’s served on a stick.

What would you do with two tortillas closed tightly and sealed around one of two different fillings — green chorizo with potatoes or black beans with corn — then fried, topped with crumbled white cheese, and drizzled with guacamole? If you’re at a fair, you put ’em on a stick, of course.

A variation on the by-now-almost-commonplace Krispy Kreme burger — a burger, with various additions, with a glazed doughnut in place of a hamburger bun — this state fair creation involves a lightly-griddled doughnut “bun,” plenty of ground meat, sloppy joe sauce, and a sprinkling of cheese.

If you’re a fan of the pickleback — a shot of whiskey followed by a shot of pickle juice (or a bite of pickle) — but want to go easy on the alcohol, this one’s for you: a light ale brewed with pickle juice by West Des Moines’ Barn Town Brewing.

This isn’t ice cream flavored with spaghetti — it’s ice cream processed into long, thin, noodle-like strips that only look like spaghetti. Strawberry ice cream is made to look like marinara sauce, and the whole thing is topped with a sprinkling of “parmesan” — actually white chocolate shavings.

Pierogies are stuffed dumplings from Eastern and Central Europe. Traditional fillings include ground meat, cheese, potato, sauerkraut, or fruits such as cherries, strawberries, or prunes. This upstate New York fair improves (?) the recipe: the dumpling contains shaved beef, mushrooms, and onions. Then it’s topped with a grilled garlic shrimp and basil-parmesan sauce — Mitteleuropa meets the Mediterranean.

Many fair foods build on commercial products — Cheetos, Krispy Kreme doughnuts, and the like — but this one doubles up. A Trix bar is stuffed inside a Twinkie, then the whole thing is swaddled in bacon and deep fried. Powdered sugar is sprinkled on the top, of course.