Fair Food

I recently had the chance to go to the local county fair and try some fair food, which is really the only reason I can think of to go to a fair.  I started off my eating journey by stopping at Big Bubba's Bad BBQ.  Here's a picture of the BBQ stand:

I had a coupon (who knew there were coupons for a county fair) for a free drink with purchase of a dinner so I split the tri-tip dinner with a friend.  The tri-tip had the telltale smoke ring on the meat so I was expecting great things but I found the meat to be mostly dry and flavorless.

Next I tried deep-fried ravioli.  I've had deep-fried ravioli before but it was breaded and then deep-fried.  This time, the ravioli was not breaded and instead was deep-fried as is, then covered in sauce.  I would have preferred to have had some breading on it but the plain ravioli's weren't so bad.  Here's a picture:

You can barely see the round ravioli under all that sauce and cheese.

Then I moved on to bacon dipped in chocolate.  I'm a fan of the Vosges "Mo's Bacon bar" because the saltiness of the bacon works really well with the sweetness of the chocolate.  So I had high hopes of the bacon dipped in chocolate being a crispy piece of bacon dipped in chocolate, much like the Vosges bar.  Instead, it was cold, tough piece of bacon that was coated with sub-par chocolate.  Needless to say, I took one bite and was done.

After my disappointing interaction with the bacon dipped in chocolate, I shared a funnel cake with a friend, which, as always, was pure sugary goodness.  I was pacing myself though, waiting for the piece de resistance - the reason why I agreed to go to the fair in the first place...

Back in 2001, I had the opportunity to go to the Minnesota state fair, which is the biggest fair I've ever been to in my life.  I tried a lot of fun and interesting things when I was there but the one thing that has always stuck with me was when I tried a deep-fried Snickers for the first time.  It starts off with a frozen snickers bar that is then dipped in sweet batter (sort of like funnel cake batter).  The batter puffs up in the deep fryer and the Snickers bar inside melts into a gooey mess of pure decadence.  Here's a picture before I bit into it:

If you're ever in a place that has deep-fried Snickers, I'd recommend trying it.  The stand I went to also had deep-fried oreos (a friend tried those and gave them a thumbs up), as well as deep-fried peanut butter cups.  I'll be trying the peanut butter cups next time.