Food vendors freshen lineups but keep faves
With nearly 100 concessions and some outrageous new foods at the OC Fair, visitors should have plenty to snack on this summer.
The fair opens Friday at the OC Fair & Event Center in Costa Mesa. It runs through Aug. 14.
Vendors are anxious to satisfy fairgoers, said Dominic Palmieri, who will have several booths on the fairgrounds.
“The No. 1 reason people come to a fair is to eat. And so we're going to give them a great experience and make it memorable. We're going to want them to come back for more,” Palmieri said.
Palmieri and other vendors see a pent-up demand for fairs in California after more than two years of disruptions due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Orange County was the first major fair in Southern California to come back after lockdowns, doing a full-fledged edition in 2021 while San Diego and Los Angeles counties did scaleddown events.
Business was great, said Gigi Horowitz of Mom's Bakeshoppe, based in Orange County. She is hoping 2022 does as well and is bringing back last year's hits: a 50/50 Brownie, which is half chocolate chip cookie and covered in frosting, and a 50/50 Brownie parfait, which is served in a cup with Bavarian cream.
Her booth, however, might look a little different this year.
“This is a little political,” she said last week at one of her locations at the San Diego County Fair, pointing to a string of sunflowers on the counter and a blue-andyellow flag. “It's a tribute to Ukraine.”
Fair vendors can't entirely shut out the world. They're dealing with rising food costs and labor shortages, which Palmieri said leads to overtime expenses.
Those challenges make it harder to create foods, he said. But he and other vendors are bringing several new items.
Some of them were served at the L.A. County Fair, which for the first time moved up its run dates from September to May.
Vendors are tweaking their menus to give Costa Mesa something a little different.
Ten Pound Buns, which makes garlic bread with really large slices of sourdough, will have two menu additions: Flame Eater, which tops the toast with Flamin' Hot Cheetos, and OC Deluxe Avocado Toast, a revival of an old favorite from earlier fairs. Owner Schuyler MacPherson described it as vegan.
Palmieri, whose concessions include Biggy's, has been experimenting with Cap'n Crunch breakfast cereal, specifically the kind with multicolored Crunch Berries. He uses it to top chicken sandwiches and a funnel cake served at
new treatments: Flamin' Hot Cheetos and avocado toast.
Mesa
88 Fair Drive, Costa
Ten Pound Buns' hulking slices of garlic bread get a couple
Dutchmen's Funnel Cakes.
Chicken sandwiches are a trend this year. Biggy's has a
Nashville chicken sandwich and a Cheetos-coated offering in addition to the Cap'n
Mom's Bakeshoppe has added a parfait version of its 50 / 50 Brownie.
Crunch version.
Charlie Boghosian, of Chicken Charlie's, created