Del Mar Fair Eats

Lesson Learned: The way to do the fair is in a big group. Then you get to try everything!

Chocolate covered bacon:

These were pre-made and served cold in a take out container.  5 pieces for $6 I think.  The bacon is covered in dark chocolate and covered with large sea salt crystals.  They also give you salt packets in case the salt in the pork fat and sprinkled salt on top isn't enough salt for you.  The ratio of chocolate to bacon was off for me and there was too much chocolate.  Eh for me.

"Tasty Sweet Potato Fire Dog":

Tiny chunks of sweet potato were thrown into a batter covering a polish dog.  Served with a mustard/mayo-like sauce.  I would have liked it better if there were more sweet potatoes.

I thought the sweet potato dog would be more like this "Hash Dog":

Described as a "crispy golden hash brown corn dog."  I'm not really a hot-dog eater but it seemed like a good concept.

At the Texas Donut booth, we bought a deep-fried Reese's:

But it came out looking like a corn dog covered in powdered sugar!  I'm guessing it was a Reese's Whipps?

Tasty, but I am a peanut butter fan.  Could have been served hotter too.  Didn't seem as fresh?

Krispy Kreme chicken sandwich:

This was smaller than I expected, but then I guess I should have expected it to be the size of a Krispy Kreme donut!  I think the chicken was breaded (not a thick breading) and it had a surprising layer of jelly in between.

It wasn't anything special to me and tasted more like a Krispy Kreme donut than anything else.

Alice came back with a huge amount of food... chicken and waffles + a deep fried twinkie.

The verdict?  Not as good as Roscoe's?

I admit I did like the twinkie, even though I detest non-fried twinkies.

Deep-fried artichoke hearts served with ranch dressing.  They were freshly fried and delicious.

While walking around, we realized there was no shortage of smoked and BBQ-ed food: BBQ chicken, BBQ beef brisket, BBQ pork ribs, BBQ beef ribs, BBQ sundae... wait... what? 

BBQ-sundae?!?!

It would be pretty disgusting if it was BBQ beef on actual ice cream (though I can't say it would surprise me since we were at the Fair) but the beef was over mashed potatoes.

I enjoyed the presentation complete with "cherry" tomato on top.

Other Fair favorites: grilled corn on the cob and turkey drumsticks.

There is something primitive about seeing people walk around holding giant drumsticks...

We finally found the booth serving funnel cake on-a-stick (why is everything at the Fair on-a-stick?) but it didn't seem like anything extraordinary so we went for the normal funnel cake.  Only we couldn't make up our mind.  Raspberry?  Apple???  Luckily, the nice woman behind the counter let us do half-and-half:

The raspberry reminded me of a jelly donut.  This was delicious but when is funnel cake not delicious?

Nearby, the creme puff booth looked interesting.  Of course, they also offered them on-a-stick.  We got the sampler ($5).

Chocolate, vanilla, strawberry and blue raspberry.  Honestly I didn't notice much in the different flavors and these were disappointing.  The creme was a basic whip cream and not a pastry cream which normally gives a cream puff its custardy texture.  Steph makes them much better.

New to the Fair this year: a deep-fried Klondike bar!

We were told to eat this quickly because it would melt so I have no gooey, melty pictures of the inside.  But I guarantee that it was gooey and melty inside.  It was good and not as disgusting as I thought it would be.  A thick layer of hot breaded batter mixed with melting vanilla ice cream inside is a nice combination.

Having polished off two of those Klondike bars, we decided to go BIG and walk over to the Heart Attack Cafe.  I wonder if this has any relation to the scary Heart Attack Grill?

One order of deep fried cinnamon butter coming up!

This was a complete disappointment and grosssssss beyond belief.  It seemed like it was a churro that they had injected with melted butter, sprinkled cinnamon on, and placed over some fried tortillas.  Oh, and covered with whip cream from a can.  There was a pool of oily grossness at the bottom of the tray.  After everyone had tried a bit, we threw the rest away.  Ewwwww.

Well, we couldn't end on such a bad note, so we went for one more item.  Fresh cooked potato chips.

Regular basket ($6) which was served fresh and hot.  These were excellent and devoured quickly.

I hope my heart forgives me after today.