Finalist for the Big Tex awards, we have the Chicken-Fried Lobster. For those unfamiliar with the idea, “chicken-fried” food is anything cooked as though it were, well, fried chicken, and this entree was the first time the crepuscular crustacean made the menu. For $30, you’d get a lobster tail, breaded and deep-fried, served alongside lemon butter champagne gravy, corn salsa, and a heap of fries. That’s in the past tense not just because it’s two years later but because the dish sold out the first day.
Also making its fair debut that year, alligator! The Deep-Fried Alligator’s Egg Nest mixes alligator meat with Monterey Jack cheese, jalapeños, garlic, and onions, rolls it all up in breadcrumbs, and deep fries it. The egg’s nest part of the name refers to the gator tot being served on a tangle of shoestring potatoes, and there’s a drizzle of chipotle sauce to indicate…I dunno, baby birds?
The Cowboy Corn Crunch mixes sweet corn, minced jalapeño, cream cheese, and smokey bacon into a tot, deep fries it, and serves it up in a palm leaf cone. A local news station promised “the first bite will knock your boots off!”
Shredded chicken mixed with cream cheese, Monterey Jack, bacon, cilantro, and sriracha is rolled into a ball, coated with crispy pretzel breading, and deep fried to create this Pretzel-Crusted Pollo Queso. Crunchy on the outside, soft and gooey on the inside, and offered alongside a jalapeño ranch for a little more kicking spice and cream to soothe those tired tastebuds.
The Fried Beer-Battered Buffalo flavors ground buffalo meat with a Mesquite smoke seasoning and adds in Pequin chili pepper, Texas’ own official native pepper. It’s then crusted in crushed Corn Nuts and coated in a batter made from another Texas native, Shiner Bock Beer. The conglomerate is deep-fried, dusted with bacon bits, and offered up with chipotle cream sauce.
The Lone Star Pork Handle marinates a hand-cut, bone-in pork chop with a rich pork rub, dips it in batter made from Texas’ own Lone Star Beer, tops it off with toasted breadcrumbs, and deep fries the sucker before smothering it with bourbon barbecue glaze.
How about something to drink? This Smoky Bacon Margarita is actually a wine-arita, since state fair vendors have a limited liquor license. Given the poor taste, though–described as a nuclear lime slushee choked with bacon bits–the best part might be the souvenir cup. Even though this might be one drink you’d rather forget.
Closing up the Big Tex finalists this year, the Holy Moly Carrot Cake Roly might be more fun to say than to taste, but not by much. It’s cinnamon bread flattened and rolled around carrot cake–complete with shredded carrots and raisins–that’s then dipped in cream cheese, covered in cinnamon, nutmeg, sweet panko, and graham cracker crumbs, deep fried, drizzled with more cream cheese frosting and caramel macchiato cream sauce, and offered with a cup of caramel sauce for dippin’.
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