State Fair on a Stick

Last Saturday, Nate and our friends Ann and Craig went to the Wisconsin State Fair. While the State Fair offers many entertaining things--people watching, farm animals, the Expo center people hawk thinks like the Sham-Wow and knife sets--the best part of the fair is the food.


Sure, it's not, for the most part, healthy. But doing it once a twice a year, who cares?? There's so much great, unusual stuff to choose from.


This is our third year the four of us have attended the fair together. We've found our favorite foods and food stands, and generally try something new to the fair that year.


Here is everything we ate (and, for the most part, we all spilt everything so we could try different things).


We started with the flavored milk from the Herb Kohl milk stand. You can't go wrong with good-sized cups of milk in flavors like strawberry, root beer, banana, cherry vanilla and chocolate. And they're each only $.25!



We then stopped at our favorite fried cheese curd place, Brad and Harry's Cheese Curds. I think it's the combination of being freshly fried curds and the delicious batter they use. These are by far the best curds (and I've had a lot) I've ever had.



Next, we went to Cousin's Subs stand for one of the new fair foods: fried cheese steak on a stick. It was pretty much like a corn dog (but smaller) with, instead of a hot dog inside, ground beef with seasoning. It came with a side of some kind of sauce--maybe something with horseradish? Unfortunately, they weren't all that great. The batter/outer part was too thick and overwhelming, and you really couldn't taste the inside.


Then we hit up Benno's micro beer tent for some drinks. There is a lot of great micro beers, much of it local. I tried a "cream puff" ale from Milwaukee Brewing Company.



Later, we stopped at the Wisconsin Products Pavilion for one of our favorite foods. Simple as it is, Ann and I love the grilled cheese sandwiches. I don't know what it is about them, but the simple American cheese on white bread is just so good.



In the same pavilion, Nate and Craig got buffalo tacos. I tried a bite of Nate's, and it's really pretty good, although it doesn't have a ton of buffalo meat in it.



Then, Nate and Craig split one of the most talked about items at the fair this year: the cheeseburger inside a Krispy Kreme doughnut. They elected to not have the burger with the piece of chocolate-covered bacon. I tried a bite of it, and I thought it tasted weird more than anything. I could really only taste the doughnut, and the texture of the burger was weird. Nate and Craig seemed to think it was all right, though.



I then felt like I needed something with some substance, so I got a turkey burger from I don't even know where. It was decent, but it wasn't the best I'd ever had. Ann got a pizza burger--beef burger with mozzarella and marinara sauce--which was really good.



Finally, we finished off with one of our favorites: deep-fried s'mores on a stick. It's a phenomenal mixture of a tasty batter with chocolate and marshmallow inside. Delicious!




All in all, it was a great eating and drinking experience. What are your favorite fair foods?