Dara's Minnesota State Fair Food Picks collage
Greetings from the first day of the 2019 Minnesota State Fair! I got here at the most beautiful cloud-streaked dawn, and kicked things off with the ice cream from Minnesota avant-garde hip-hop star Dessa, made by a St. Paul company and served by volunteers in a church dining hall.
Is there anything more contemporary Minnesotan than that? This ice cream is pretty rad—coffee with cardamom, and espresso chips. Get it! But it didn’t even come close to cracking my top 5. Here’s what did, and if you’re asking: "Have we ever had two pies in the top five?" The answer is: No! Never. But with a solid 40% of the top five this year, it’s pie. Read on!
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Grilled Sota Sandwich
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Dilly Dog
5. Grilled Sota Sandwich, Brim, and the Deep-Fried Dilly Dog, Swine and Spuds
I’m having a heck of a hard time picking fifth place! I fear I’ve done this before, but let’s do an angel-on-my-shoulder, devil-on-my-shoulder contrast. If you’re gluten-free or trying to feed a gluten-free kid and having a hard time finding appetizing treats at the fair, the new Grilled Sota Sandwich from the new trailer of the Minneapolis restaurant Brim is a darling and a sweetheart. Homemade chunky blueberry jam from local farms and house-made almond-peanut butter is swiped onto house-made gluten-free Irish soda-bread, and the whole thing is grilled till it gets toasty. It’s the most homemade, charming, food-as-kind-nourishment food at the fair, plain and delicious.
On the other hand! The Deep-Fried Dilly Dog at Swine and Spuds in the Coliseum, friends, sit down. This thing. Imagine taking a drill to a pickle, and coring out the center, to then insert a bratwurst. Then, you take this pickle with a core of bratwurst, batter the whole dang thing, and deep fry it! It’s like the turducken of corn dogs—the picklebraten? Anyway, it’s insane. I was impressed with how the batter puffs into a very tasty cornbread, but mainly I wanted to walk around and force people to admire the unlikely structural integrity: Lookit this thing! Take a picture with it! Amazing.
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Hickory Grilled Texas Red Hot Sausage
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Michelada
4. Hickory Grilled Texas Red Hot Sausage and a Michelada, Tejas Express
Do you forget that Tejas is run by legendary chef Mark Haugen? I know, you’ve got a lot going on, I might forget too. But you remember as soon as you get the two new big items at Tejas this year. The Hickory Grilled Texas Red Hot is actually a gluten-free, soy-free, grain-free, dairy-free bowl of chunks of really good grilled sausage tossed with pickled onions, arugula, and a blend of sweet chow-chow and a succotash of corn and beans. It’s so flavorful! It should also be catnip for you Whole30 types—spice, meat, veggies, wonder. Let me also sing the praises of the Michelada, for which Haugen ground up a guajillo chile purée to blend with fresh lime juice, giving the Mexican tomato-juice beer classic a depth of chili-spice, not just heat.
Blueberry Key Lime Pie
3. Blueberry Key Lime Pie, Birchwood at the Farmer’s Union
What happens when the makers of the Twin Cities most legendary key lime pie decide to make a local blueberry pie with an Annie’s graham-cracker crust base? Nothing but magic, people. These little personal pies are big enough to feed two or even four people if you’re sharing, and they’ve got it all: Big berry flavor, a just-right graham-cracker crust, and a light spray of real small-farm whipped cream to lighten the experience. This pie also marks our first foodie-souvenir at the fair—get one to go for your friends who can’t make it? Or freeze it and save it, it’s worth it.
Warm Cheesecake Tart
2. Warm Cheesecake Tart, LuLu’s Public House
Did you ever think you wanted warm cheesecake? Of course not! That’s why that stuff is routinely chilled. Which I have now learned is a culture-wide mistake. People. The warm cheesecake tarts at LuLu’s are a revelation: Quivering, creamy, lush, like a crème brulée, but out in the hubbub of life. Get the one of the two options that comes with a glaze of fruit from the sour tank used to make the Berry-Go-Round sour ($9, available only at the little Starkeller corner at LuLu’s). This glaze is not sweet-fruity, because the sweetness gets removed during the sour process, but a bit woody, and black-currant deep. In fact, pair it with the Berry-Go-Round sour beer, and that’s a culinary miracle at the fair—the warm lush of the tart meets the sour bitter pop of the beer, the palate is cleared, the flavors are amplified. I don’t want to get all wine-critic on you here, but if you want to do a real fancy style food pairing: that’s how it’s done, son!
Snow Cap Mini-Waffle Sundae
1. Best in Show: Snow Cap Mini-Waffle Sundae with Izzy’s cheesecake ice cream, a maraschino cherry, and maple syrup, Hamline Dining Hall
Friends, I don’t throw the word masterpiece around easily, but this thing is a masterpiece of fair food. Here’s how it goes: Walk up to the window, the church volunteers pour waffle batter into a mini-waffle maker, and the waffle that pops out is hot and simply lovely in every way. Then they add a small but perfect scoop of extremely thick, almost mascarpone-like cream cheese ice cream, from St. Paul legend Izzy’s. Then up top goes a Washington state non-chemical-tasting maraschino cherry, and a drizzle of maple syrup from 100-year maple syrup family producer Lemire’s. The ice-cream starts to melt into the waffle, the waffle stays warm, the syrup makes sense because, do not forget, it’s a waffle—10 bites later, it’s gone. I can’t believe no one has done this before. It’s so innocent, it’s so farm-perfect, it’s so well thought through in every detail. People, there’s a reason the Hamline Dining Hall has been killing it since 1897, and this year these godly volunteers in long aprons came armed to the teeth.
