I admit, I have not shared this year’s Swine-stravaganza known as the Great Minnesota Get-Together because it just didn’t feel like a typical fair-on-a-stick experience. Honestly, Janet Eats’ favorite food at the fair this year didn’t even come on a stick.
Actually, favorite foods (plural) because it was pretty much a toss-up between Sweet Corn ice cream with Honey Bacon sauce and the Walleye Roll. Neither on a stick. And almost not even fair food per se, because I could see eating either of those dishes at a sitdown restaurant.
The ice cream. Oh my god, that ice cream. Rich icy (not creamy — I like my frozen confections granular on the tongue not buttery) ice cream studded with nuggets of sweet corn kernels and toasty almost praline-like corn nuts. On top: crispy bacon bathing in a warmed honey sauce. I hate to say it, but this sublime smoked porky corny treat has supplanted the Honey Sunflower Ice Cream cone that was my perennial favorite. Yes. Sadly. True.
As to the Walleye fair fare: think Lobster Roll. It was prepared at a booth — way at the end of the fairgrounds. Sandwiched between the lumberjack competition arena and the pets building where, if you schedule your visit just right, you can watch them spay a dachshund. In other words, not far from Machinery Hill.
The booth has several other Walleye dishes (I think one of them is fried and on a stick but don’t hold me to it) as well as salad on a stick, and batter-fried bacon. The Walleye Roll — oh walleye is in the perch family, popular with Minnesota fishermen. Anyway — like a lobster roll it has a mayo base and is served in a buttered roll. Appropriately enough it also contained wild rice. The mayo was very light. The sandwich was placed on a bed of shredded lettuce and peppered perch-fectly.
My fave at the fair this year. Steeled me for the afternoon parade of prancing pickles, marching bands, and giant heifers on wheels.
Janet Eats 