A look at the outrageous food available, from the Cheetos Cheese Pickles to deep-fried bacon macaroni
If it’s ooey, gooey, fried and chewy, you can find it at the rodeo.”
That’s a promise from Dominic Palmieri, who calls himself the Midway Gourmet and wears that title proudly as the man who brings some of the tastiest and most outrageous edibles to the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo’s sprawling midway.
As food manager for RCS, the carnival concessions company that operates 38 concession stands at the rodeo, Palmieri is a foodie fixture at the fair — a veteran of the carnival circuit and company innovator of sweet and savory concoctions designed to thrill taste buds. That means food like liquid nitrogen churros, hot Cheetos cotton candy and frozen pineapple whip in a waffle cone.
“We do it all,” Palmieri said, “from the traditional rodeo foods to the wild and wacky.”
And it’s that breadth of palates that the rodeo makes sure to accommodate when planning the food offerings for Houston’s annual carnival chow down.
“That’s their thing with the outrageous, cool, funky and far out,” senior manager of exhibits and events Amanda Schlatre said of the State Fair of Texas in Dallas, known for its almost shocking array of carnival food. “We’re looking for some of that, too, don’t get me wrong. But our mission also includes a mixture of local and traditional. We know a lot of people have their rodeo favorites.”
In other words, you can get your turkey legs, burgers, curly fries, candy apples, corn dogs and burritos at the rodeo. But you can also find foods specifically engineered to wow your mouth and light up your Instagram feed.
Schlatre’s committee oversees about 80 vendors throughout NRG Center and NRG Arena, where eight new restaurants and businesses will come on board this year as new concessionaires, including Houston’s beloved El Patio restaurant, Jasper’s The Woodlands and a Fredericksburg Mini-Donut Co.
New foods from those vendors will augment the established lineup of fare from familiar names such as Goode Company, Saltgrass Steak House, Cadillac Bar and Pappas Restaurants.
During a recent preview of all that the rodeo has to offer for 2020, several new carnival food dishes were announced, including deep-fried bacon macaroni and cheese eggrolls and
Black Gold Truffles made from crushed chocolate cookies, cream cheese and white chocolate chips that are rolled into balls, coated with crumbled vanilla wafers and corn flakes and fried to a golden crisp.
But it’s RCS’s Cheetos Cheese Pickles that Palmieri thinks will be the breakout hit this year: Cold slices of thick-cut kosher dill pickles topped with a hot cheese sauce and sprinkled with crushed Flamin’ Hot Cheetos.
“It’s the perfect balance of salt, fat and acid,” Palmieri said. “It’s an explosion of great flavors.”
By this time, he’s good at predicting carnival food trends. This is his 26th year feeding the hungry on the midway. Or, as Palmieri likes to put it:
“This isn’t my first rodeo.”