The Kentucky State Fair will offer displays of crafts and hobbies, demonstrations of herding dogs herding ducks around an obstacle course, sheds full of floppy-eared rabbits and extravagantly plumed chickens (my favorites) and, of course, the World Championship Horse Show — not to mention concerts galore — but we all know what really draws people to the fairgrounds. The food.
The food that vendors offer encompasses the perennially traditional — corn dogs and elephant ears and sausage sandwiches with fried peppers and watery lemonade — and the annually unique — deep-fried Snickers bars, or fried Twinkies, or burgers served on doughnuts, or gargantuan fried turkey legs.
It is, I guess, fun to hear about this caloric assault every year, to read about what new culinary debacle will be set before the hungry public wandering through the fairgrounds. For me, it is a kind of food slumming — but only vicariously. I often prefer to read about movies, rather than watch them, and I prefer to read about fair food, rather than eat it.
Larry Sivori is happy that most people are not of my persuasion. Sivori runs food operations in fairs throughout the Midwest and South, and will be one of the principal vendors at the Kentucky State Fair, in addition to local favorites such as Mike Linnig’s and the state pork, beef, lamb and chicken producers, who all will be selling food.
Sivori is the one responsible for introducing the most talked-about food choice in recent years, the infamous hamburger served on a glazed doughnut. That will be returning this year, along with a new item — a spicy fried breaded chicken breast served on a raspberry jelly doughnut.
“We’re going for a bit of healthier touch, going with chicken over the beef,” Sivori deadpanned. His vendors were the ones that offered the deep-fried Derby-Pie last year, which will return. And it will be true Derby-Pie. “Me and Alan are good,” Sivori said, referring to Alan Rupp, president of Kern’s Kitchen, which protects the Derby-Pie trademark name assiduously.
The other major new silly food offering will be a tribute to the 100th anniversary of the Girl Scouts — deep-fried Girl Scout cookies. “We make a sweet batter, dip the cookies in, fry them and sprinkle powdered sugar on,” Sivori explained. “There’ll be four to an order or a six-cookie combo” — two of each kind, Samoas, Tagalongs and Thin Mints.
Sivori said he keeps up on food trends, reads the trade magazines and sees things on TV that are getting a lot of play. “But the Girl Scouts came to me. They saw the fried Derby-Pie last year, suggested doing Girl Scout cookies. We experimented, found a way to deep fry them, and it came out real well.”
Another dessert Sivori proudly described is the deep-fried Kool-Aid. A sweet fritter batter is mixed with flavored Kool-Aid, scooped into balls and fried, then dusted with cherry-flavored powdered sugar.
Although he travels widely with his food concessions, he doesn’t change his menu a lot, but different areas of the country have their food preferences. “I do a lot more Chicago-style hot dogs around Chicago. In Northern states, Italian sausage sells better, and in the South, I sell more smoked sausage. I do more pulled pork here in Kentucky, but out West I do more brisket.”
But Sivori was not aware of an item that made a splash at the Indiana State Fair: spaghetti and meatballs ice cream. It was just vanilla gelato extruded into strands, topped with balls of chocolate and strawberry sauce, with shaved white chocolate for “cheese.” But calling it “spaghetti and meatballs ice cream” is enough to get newspaper feature editors excited about fair food, another demonstration of the power of language to override good sense.
