Friday, September 2, 2011

The Foods of LA County Fair. Oh, Deep Fried Kool Aid!

It's time for the LA County Fair! Starting this weekend: Rides, live animals, and of course ... food!

The fair runs from Sept 3-Oct 2 (closed Mondays and Tuesdays), but for the first time, this year they invited food-related media in before the Fair opens so we can sample some of the food they offer. The fair's "specialty" is all the weird fried food from Chicken Charlie's. We didn't get to sample everything but we did try their new fried bbq ribs and the fried Kool Aid!

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Fried kool-aid
Think of flavored donut holes (cherry flavored donut holes, perhaps?) dusted with Kool Aid powder. They're actually pretty good, not as weird as I thought they might be! Surprisingly, they're also not as greasy as many donut holes. We heard that the LA County Fair special will be "caramel apple fries" - if you get to try these, let me know what they're like!

For fairs and festivals, a must-item for me is a smoked giant turkey leg! Here they're served by Big Bubba's BBQ.
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(here's a pic for size comparison).

There will be funnel cakes, of course, but there are also Indian fry bread. We tried one topped with Thai chicken, one dusted with powdered sugar, and one dusted with cinnamon sugar.
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The saucy chicken made it a bit soggy so I'd suggest you stick to the sweet versions.

If you want chicken on a skewer, you can skip Chicken Charlie's kabob (moist and tender but rather bland) and go get the bbq chicken from the Thai Cuisine booth. The bbq chicken here is still tender but much more flavorful. You can also get Thai tea with boba to beat the summer heat.
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Speaking of beating the heat, there will be plenty of ice cream options. Make sure you try Dr Bob's ice cream. We didn't get to have them at the preview, but we did have a nuts and chocolate covered frozen cheesecake bars from Olde Tyme ice cream.
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There will also be a lot of food trucks there. During the preview there were the Calbi truck
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there was Pioggia, an OC-based Argentinean truck. Their empanadas were nice and crispy, and not greasy. We all loved their Porker Sandwich ($7) : nicely flavored pork collar (tasted like it was cured?), blue cheese, roasted red pepper, and chimichurri on french bread. I never knew this truck existed - glad I got to try it!
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Warm Nutella crepes from Crepe Bonaparte:
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Standard beers will be served, as well as Cosmos, strawberry margaritas (served in a Sauza plastic glass that lights up), and Sailor Jerry n lemonade.

Only select food booths were open during the preview, but we did get to ride the mechanical bull! Yes, I did try it and I think I did ok!
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this girl isn't me, obv. Don't worry, they took it real easy on her.
No child was harmed in the making of this photo.
For the adventurous, there will a roller coaster and a shark encounter tank (yes, I'm curious about the shark tank too).

3 comments:

sdfafsadf

Yay I can't wait !!!! I'll try the caramel apple fries.

Joshua Lurie

I like that you have the disclaimer, saying no children were harmed in the making of your photo. The pork sandwich looks good. No Dr. Bob's? Sad.

Unknown

I've always said I go to fairs for the food only. Glad they were the stars here!

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