Since I started covering the annual event in 2022, I have become deeply knowledgeable about the food at the State Fair of Texas —and about the people who make it. I have gone to the judging of the Big Tex Choice Awards, which is what it calls its annual food competition, and sampled all the finalists. I've brought big-name Dallas chefs in before the Fair starts to taste-test these creations and render their verdicts. I've interviewed the people who run Fair concessions, including numerous legacies whose families have been at the Fair for over 80 years and were the first to introduce iconic foods like the corny dog and funnel cakes.
This year, I was invited to be a judge in the Big Tex Choice Awards for the first time. For me, this was a dream. I've long felt that the judges were too soft in their critiques of the objectively over-the-top (and sometimes gross) foods, that the choices were inexplicable, and just all around knew I could bring some actual rigor to the process. I learned three things that I'm going to share with you. But first, let's set the scene.
In the past, judging the food finals at the State Fair of Texas fell to a panel of five people, a mix of public figures including journalists, TV and radio personalities, and influencers mostly, plus some chefs. The media looked on as the judges ate 15 dishes and rated them; winners were announced, and there was a media tasting. Karissa Condoianis, the senior vice president of public relations for the Fair, told me that after last year's event she got her staff together to brainstorm ideas for how to change things up.
The Fair's newly revamped judging system involves 30 judges, made up mostly of members of the media and a handful of influencers, all scoring food on taste, price, presentation, fairgoer appeal, and creativity. This was where I learned my first lesson: Some dishes taste awful, but are extremely creative and get high marks for that reason alone. The scoring was the one thing they didn't update. We got cards with each dish on them and were told to rank them from 1 to 4 (poor, fair, good, best of the best). The very nature of the scoring makes it hard to tank a dish unless it fails on all metrics — or you, as a judge, decide to take a dish with across-the-board poor ratings, which I did for one dish.
The Flamin' Crunch Pizza is a five-alarm disaster of pizza (made by a man named Tom Grace, who owns some CiCi's Pizza franchises, so that's the crust) with a base of jalapeño cheddar queso, topped with mozzarella and cheddar cheeses, a bag of Flamin' Hot Cheetos dumped on top after it's baked. Then there is an additional drizzle of queso (it was actually a flood; it's very hard to drizzle melted cheese) and Buffalo buttermilk ranch dressing, plus a not-even-remotely delicate dusting of Cheeto debris. I hated it before I tasted it, but when the unholy grouping of textures from soft pizza crust, gooey cheese, and rough Cheetos hit my mouth, I had to try hard not to spit it out. That much cheese with no acid to even out the flavors was also painful. But I had to give it high marks for creativity, because no one has done anything quite like that to a pizza at the Fair before. This is how terrible, or even mediocre, foods end up with a higher ranking than they deserve.
My second lesson came when the Fernie's Frozen Espresso-Tini Bar came out. I was dubious about this little chocolate ice cream bar. It looked even more tragic than the press photos when it landed in front of me. The freshly poured dark chocolate on top of it was frozen into place, and the bar itself had some ice crystal formation, which is never a good sign. I also side-eye the espresso martini generally, because it's such a wildly popular drink in Dallas that it feels overdone and is rarely executed well. But this was simple and good, as long as you like coffee and booze.
It also felt like an earned success, because I've visited the owners of Fernie's Funnel Cakes, Christi Erpillo and Johnna McKee, who have made it their business for the past handful of years to integrate alcohol into the Fair. They have one of a handful of specialty booths that are allowed to use real liquor — thanks to some archaic Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission (TABC) rules, most vendors are restricted to beer and wine, even in cocktails. Yes, it is a little strange that the dynasty behind funnel cakes at the Fair — Erpillo and McKee are the second generation of their family to run Fernie's — is the strongest driver of cocktail and alcohol culture on the Fair grounds. But they hit a home run with their frozen treat.
Overall, eating the five finalists in the sweets category was a painful sugar bomb that gave me a headache. They were all maximalist, from an ice cream cone stuffed with cheesecake and whipped cream to the category winner, a chocolate-stuffed corny dog with a side of raspberry compote. But that was another incredible story, which was the third thing I learned — or, maybe realized would be a better way to say it.
Neil and Carl Fletcher introduced the world, and the Fair, to corny dogs in 1942, when the fried hot dog on a stick made its debut. They were vaudeville guys who put on shows at the Fair before they got into concessions, and are now the food most deeply associated with the annual event. Today, the Fletchers' stands serve turkey, veggie, and jalapeño and cheese versions of the dog to accommodate folks with dietary restrictions.
The Fletcher family sells some 500,000 corny dogs during the month the Fair goes on. Still, they have never had a finalist in the Big Tex Choice Awards, because they don't regularly invent new foods like other concessionaires. They don't need to. This year, they showed up with a sweet, milk chocolate fudge-stuffed corn dog and walked away with the Best Sweet award. It's so simple, but the nostalgia of that story and the sense of pride the community has in this dynastic Fair family drove the award home. And it is a damn good corny dog.
I heard all kinds of stories I hadn't before, like that Cody Hays, who entered Nacho Wings (it's just chicken wings covered in nacho toppings, and it's impossibly hard to eat), was the chef at the Ritz-Carlton for a decade. That explains why the dishes he and his wife submit every year are so complicated. I already knew that Stephen El Gidi, the man behind the Most Creative winner, a matcha-and-white-chocolate-covered slice of cheesecake on a stick that he calls Berry Me in Matcha, is a former Olympic swimmer. Still, it was a fun fact many of the judges around me didn't know.
The Nevins family, who are the longest-running vendors at the Fair, announced that they've added the fifth generation of future concessionaires to the clan. He's a toddler now, but when I go back to judge fair food in 20 years, he'll have a hard time inventing anything weirder than his mom's first entry to the Fair's food contest, which was a deep-fried charcuterie board a few years ago. I look forward to trying the entry from the Bednars every year, because it is guaranteed to be the only bite I have with actual fiber in it. Last year, they took the Best Sweet award for a take on a traditional Colombian dessert with actual fruit in it. Do you have any idea how rare it is for a sweet with anything but freeze-dried strawberries or fruit compote to win that prize? When I interviewed the couple about it, Tony Bednar cried twice while telling his story. I cried with him one of those times. This year they did a Golden Crunch Melt, which was a take on the Taco Bell favorite. It had real, thick-cut bell peppers and onions. I cannot tell you how grateful I was to eat a vegetable.
Most people just look at the food that makes it to the finals of these contests and think, wow, that's hilarious/gross/sounds delicious/I would never eat that/I can't wait to try that. But, truly, the most interesting part of the Fair is the people who come back year after year to enter the contest. I'm a sucker for their touching personal stories about what it means to be there, carrying on their family's traditions or trying something new.
Hearing their strategies and the stories of how they've grown, what they've learned, and what they're scheming to do next year? That's just as strange and beautiful as the food they make.
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Jaya Saxena
