Fran After a few days off from the Fair to manage Henry’s start of the school year, it was time to return. This visit was extra special because our friend Chris had flown in from Rhode Island to experience the Fair! Introducing new people to the Fair brings Katie and I immense joy, and it’s super fun to see the Fair through a newcomer’s eyes!
Now, this post will be highlighting an obscene amount of food, but we did share all items, and we WERE at the Fairgrounds for 13 hours, which maybe makes it slightly less obscene?? With a first-time Fairgoer, we had a LOT of ground to cover, there’s just no avoiding gluttonous amounts of food.
To properly prepare Chris for the food extravaganza, Katie produced an amazing tri-fold brochure which Chris diligently studied and made his choices.
As we arrived on the Fairgrounds Thursday morning, Chris’ anticipation and excitement was palpable!
Chris enjoys gardening and is a prolific vegetable gardener back home, so we made our first stop the Ag Building. First stop was the crop art room. We enjoyed the depictions of popular culture. The seed art is divided into two categories, “painted or dyed” and “natural”. Here are some of the painted/dyed examples.
All of us are 80s music kids, so we enjoyed the homage to The Boss too.
After browsing through the winning seed displays in the crop art room, we took the Seed Identification Quiz. 100%!! If you need to sort your buckwheat seeds from your canola seeds, you know who to call.
Chris hit us with a quiz question of his own. See if you know the answer: Minnesota is the nation’s leading producer of three of the following items: turkeys, sugar beets, hogs and sweet corn. Which one doesn’t belong? Answer after the next picture…
While you deliberate, we checked out the Largest Sugar Beet contest.
The answer is hogs (Iowa is #1, Minnesota is a fairly distant #2). The tricky part is that it is sweet corn, not feed corn! (And also, for trivia purists, this seems to refer to sweet corn headed for processing vs. sold as-is at markets).
Next we wandered through the bee and honey wing, where we had another of those unexpected Fair finds! It’s always fun to see a competition entry from someone you know! Hi cousin Sheryl! Her granola IS super tasty, we’ve been lucky recipients of it at Christmas time!
Chris had demanded that he see giant vegetables on this trip, and the Fair did not disappoint! First sugar beets, now pumpkins!
As the Fair goes on, sometimes the veggies start to succumb to the summer heat. I hadn’t noticed this in past years, but they put out a gravestone for the giant pumpkins!
Chris has questions for Serene. He wants to understand what drives a person to dedicate so much time, effort and space chasing a largest vegetable ribbon for a vegetable that has no other use. It’s purely for the love of the Fair, Chris. Chasing the dream is all the motivation one needs. To his credit, I believe he understood this by the end of his visit, it just took some time being immersed in the Fair, and we’re still early here.
I thought the baseball and mitt were a particularly creative entry in the vegetable decorating contest.
The braided garlic ropes were lovely as well.
One aspect of the Fair that Chris especially enjoyed was having access to experts to ask about the contests.
We’d been in the Fair for nearly an hour without a bite to eat. Time to remedy that! And in honor of Chris’ first Fair visit, he will get the scoring honors, rating each item on a 4-star scale.
We headed over to the International Bazaar to sample a couple of those food vendors. We started with the Smoked Beef Arepa at the Midtown Global Market’s booth from their Arepa Bar. This was a VERY good start to the food day. The beef and filling were fantastic, and the fresh arugala added a nice touch. A minor quibble is that the arepa may have been a nudge too tough, but that’s a nitpick. Chris’ rating: a very strong 3.5!
We also grabbed a repeat of the Galabao bun from Union Hmong. They switched out the sauce on the bun between week one and two - this is a lemongrass sauce. Katie felt this was an upgrade, but I really missed that amazing green sauce from last week. Chris found the dough-to-filling balance a bit off, leading to a too-dry dish. Chris scored it at 2 stars.
While at Union Hmong we also got the Hmong sausage and noodles dish. The sausage was really nice and the pickled veggies were a nice counterpart, but this isn’t a must-have. I find noodle dishes hard at the Fair, very filling and the noodles themselves are not super flavorful and feel like they take up valuable stomach real estate. Chris wasn’t feeling the Union Hmong food vibe today and was not super into the flavor profile. 2 stars. Perhaps us locals are a bit blinded by Union Hmong’s stellar reputation in the community to judge the Fair items on their own merits? Or perhaps Chris is just wrong?
Moving out of the Bazaar we headed towards the Dairy Building. Whenever Katie and I are in that vicinity, we’re going to get the Peterson’s Pork Chop. As our favorite Fair food item, this was a must-try for Chris. Katie and I were like anxious parents just hoping our beloved pork chop would be appreciated…
Chris’ verdict? FOUR STARS!!!! Quote: “Where has this been all my life?” Phew. It was going to be tough ending our friendship with Chris if he didn’t like this. Thankfully that was avoided.
While waiting on line for the pork chop, I spotted something interesting over at the MPR Booth! If opera performance isn’t the most Fair-stereotype-busting thing ever, I don’t know what is!
Inside the Dairy Building a butter carving was in progress. Here is Gracie Ash from Mille Lacs County getting her butter head sculpted. Gracie is a U of M student majoring in Agricultural Communications and Marketing and double minoring in Leadership and Media Information, and she also shows dairy cows. We learned that the princess finalists all get to keep not only their butter heads but also all of the scraps, totalling 90 pounds of good ole Minnesota butter! One of the finalists is crowned Princess Kay of the Milky Way, who spends the year attending events as the goodwill ambassador of Minnesota’s dairy farmers.
It was time for an all-time Fair classic: cheese curds! There’s really only one place to go to have a first-time Fair cheese curd experience: Mouth Trap! Always fun to see the horde of workers churning out order after order of curds.
Here we go!
Chris scored these “a clear 4 stars, and if there were more than 4 stars, I’d give them those too.” Wow! We’re on a hot streak here!
Speaking of 4-star items, just outside the Food Building is the Ball Park Cafe, home of the iconic - and my favorite Fair drink - mini donut beer. Of course I wasn’t going to let Chris go to the Fair without trying one of these. Beer is a very personal thing, so I didn’t get my hopes up too much that Chris (or anyone, really) would appreciate this as much as I do.
Chris’ verdict? 3.5! I knew I liked that guy for a reason.
Not wanting to mess with the nearly perfect run of food and drink we just experience, we paused the eating and wandered west towards the animal barns, passing through the DNR along the way (forgot to take any photos). Chris and I climbed the fire tower to get a birds’ eye view of the grounds, and may have just missed being interviewed for TV, as Kelli Hanson and Kristin Haubrich from Twin Cities Live were heading up as we headed back down.
After quite a few savory things, we thought it was time for some dessert. We headed to the Blue Moon to get their new dessert, butter ice cream served on cinnamon toast. They are known for wacky ice cream flavors ever since more or less starting the trend with their sweet corn ice cream many years ago. This one proved controversial. Fran thought the ice cream was pretty good, but Chris and Katie agreed that the butter was overpowering. Fran didn’t enjoy the toast, while Katie felt that it helped balance the ice cream’s richness. So, no consensus here, if you’re intrigued you’ll just have to try it!
Chris’ score: 1.5 stars
Now it was time for some animal events. This day happened to be barn changeover day (when the barns empty out for the next wave of animals), so it was pretty quiet in the area, but we did happen upon the llama obstacle course competition.
Yeah, you read that right: there’s a LLAMA OBSTACLE COURSE COMPETITION! And let me tell you, it is RIVETING.
So, it turns out, I don’t think llama’s particularly enjoy obstacle courses. It was more of a llama obstacle course toleration contest. But this kinda made it even more entertaining. Except I don’t want to give the impression that this was a joke event, because I don’t think we saw a single trainer crack a smile the entire time. They are dedicated to their craft!
Continuing the “sleepy competition” theme, the horse show was featuring “Western Pleasure” categories. The basic idea here is that the competitors walk their horses around the edge of the ring while getting judged. The various walking speeds appeared to be something akin to very slow walk, slow walk, regular walk, purposeful walk, and “pretend to jog but not really”. After watching this for a while we felt like we had the hang of it, and all three of us agreed and confidently declared which horse clearly rose above the others and looked the best.
That horse finished dead last. The essence of Western Pleasure clearly eludes us.
We were in for a real treat next - the miniature pony carts! Specifically, the “tiny ponies under 34” tall pulling a tiny cart with a full size human in it” class.
Notice how the blurry photo indicates the sheer speed of travel! (Or, how it indicates that I just can’t take a good photo sometimes)
Entertainment value: HIGH! The lead horse and driver won here, due to what I can only assume is the sheer awesomeness of that turquoise riding outfit!
Outside the Coliseum Chris spotted a shaved ice booth and indulged. A Fair classic, hard to screw up and they didn’t. 3.5 stars.
One of Chris’ most highly anticipated Fair food items was the deep fried pickles, and the moment had arrived. Chris was worried that these would be limp pickle spears with a bit of batter attached, but we had reassured him that such an abomination would have no place at the super bowl of state fairs. And the pickles did not disappoint! Chris considered them perfect, no dipping sauce needed. 4 stars! I still will hit them with the dipping sauce, but will now take the time to enjoy a few of them straight as a nod to Chris’ preferred style.
In the West End we settled in to listen to a John Denver tribute band. John Denver factoids we learned: he met his wife at Gustavus Adolphus College and got married in St. Peter, and they lived in Edina for a couple of years as well.
After our concert break, we headed back to the central part of the Fair and visited another iconic Fair food, the corn roast. The corn has been solid this year - not the best year I’ve experienced, but given the drought and challenging growing conditions, I’ve been appeciating how good the corn has still managed to be this year. Chris’ verdict? 3.5 stars. “Simple and delicious. If it hadn’t gotten stuck in my teeth, it might have done better.”
I’ve been trying to drum up excitement for the lemonade sorbet all fair, with little success. But I finally was near enough to grab one and try it! It’s good to have a few light palate cleansers to go to at the Fair and I was hopeful this would fit the bill. I really enjoyed it! It tasted fresh and had lemon zest in it as well, and it didn’t have any artificial tones so many lemon items at the Fair have. I also enjoyed the lemon rind serving vessel. Would definitely do again! Chris also found it appealing, giving it 3.5 stars.
Time for a spin through the Creative Activities building. This bird quilt caught my eye.
We’d been trying and failing to communicate to Chris the sheer vastness of the baking competition, so it was fun to just watch him experience it. Bars, brownies, muffins, and more!
Chris proved to be a tougher critic of the cake decorating than I am. You don’t want him on your judging panel!
Jams and jellies!
There was some consternation about the categorization of the contests and how some categories seem overly broad while others are incredibly specific. The dried fruit category is a case in point: tough to judge these against one another. As part of Chris’ visit we spent a significant amount of time consulting the contest rule books as we debated various aspects of the competition. It was a good conversation starter if nothing else!
I always enjoy the colors of the oil display.
Finally, we cracked through Chris’ tough judging with this piece, where Chris appreciated the artist’s ability to make a hard substance like wood look soft.
And now, the moment you all didn’t know you’d been waiting for! It’s time for the PRONTO PUP vs. PANCHO DOG BATTLE! Any veteran Fairgoer knows about this age-old debate. Will Chris fall on the side of team Pronto, or will he side with camp classic corn dog??
The battle was ferocious with many an opinion being flung about. We even roped in other nearby Fairgoers, on the edge of their seats waiting to see what Chris would pick. The verdict?
Pronto Pup took home the hardware, with a 3.5 rating vs. the Pancho dog’s 3.0. Katie and I used to be on team Pronto in the past as well, but we have since switched to Pancho Dog. Side-by-side, we both stuck with our Pancho pick, but Chris’ choice of Pronto proves that this debate will continue, and really, there’s no wrong answer! Except, Chris was wrong, but that’s ok!
Battle over, we headed into the Education Building for the children’s art. 10th grader Anne’s piece from the grand champions section was incredibly impressive!
I’d like to invite you all to pause now and click on this image and zoom in to read Cole’s report on Hawaii. We thoroughly enjoyed reading through this. That kid is going places!
Back outside, Chris was always surprised to hear about Fair activities we’d never done, considering how much Fairgoing we’ve done. The Krazy Maze was one of those activities, so we decided to give it a try!
My expectations weren’t all that high, but it was actually pretty fun! For $5, it was the right balance of not too easy but not too hard, and it was fun to try to do it as a team and coordinate a strategy. We finished in 10 minutes. They change the route daily so it has some replay value, too.
Next, we stopped at Baba’s to have Chris try one of our newer Fair favorites, the hummus bowls. We opted for the Baba Al Taco flavor. Chris enjoyed that it was a bit of a Fair novelty, and lighter fare than the usual, but found it not quite coming together for him, rating it at 2.5 stars. I think Katie and I both had a more favorable opinion of it, but in full disclosure we are 100% obsessed with those warm mini fried pitas!
Another item high on Chris’ pre-Fair list was the Fried Green Tomato sandwich at the Farmer’s Union. Having already tried it earlier in the Fair, and being a firm believer in all things Farmer’s Union, I was confident Chris would enjoy this. And it delivered, earning a strong 3.5 stars!
Meanwhile, having just read back through old Fair blog posts while putting together FAIRly Obsessed last week, I wanted to revisit the Wild Rice Cheeseburger. I enjoyed it again! I don’t often want a cheeseburger at the Fair, but this is a nice way to do it that feels like it has some Fair novelty to it. The onions are also fantastic. Chris didn’t try this, but I’d give this 3 stars.
As evening approached, it was time to meet up with our family. We needed more mouths to help us with perhaps the most iconic of all MN State Fair foods: a bucket of Sweet Martha’s chocolate chip cookies! If there’s one item that says MN State Fair more than any other, it’s this, the highest grossing item at the fair, with 12 million cookies served each year!
We had warned Chris that the love for these is more about nostalgia than about how they stand up as an excellent chocolate chip cookie, but it turns out the disclaimer was unncessary. Chris loved these cookies on their own merits! Chris rated them “3.5 stars, better than billed by my tour guides, who downplayed their tastiness. And still good two days later.” Maybe it’s time I stopped disparaging the cookie!
We finished off Chris’ first-ever visit to the Fair as one should: by taking in a Grandstand concert. Tonight’s show was Duran Duran, with openers Chic with Nile Rodgers and Bastille.
The show was great! Chic was the perfect opening band, and Duran Duran is an easy win for this group of 80s music lovers. Bastille felt unnecessary, but it didn’t matter, the evening was thoroughly enjoyed by all!
And thus Chris’ first visit to the MN State Fair came to a close as we enjoyed the Fairgrounds view and the fireworks from the Grandstand seats. Yet another epic visit to the Fair this year is in the books, but we’re not done yet. Chris returns for day 2 next!
2023 Visit #2