No, this is not a post about food being local and fair to farmers and consumers, although I certainly agree that it should. This, my friends, is an ode to the food that is fried, covered in powdered sugar, or grilled before your eyes and served to you in little paper to go containers, or wrapped in paper towels, or my personal favorite, on a stick. This is a shout out to food that you find at festivals, street fairs, county fairs, or anywhere else that someone is serving you from a stand.

I love fair food.

Saturday, I went to Seattle’s Folklife Festival. I go every year, mostly for the food. Sure, there are tons and tons of performers and bands doing crazy things and occupying every inch of space possible and filling the whole Seattle Center with whimsy and weirdness, but I like the food. In fact, generally a group of us friends get together and just make a gluttonous afternoon of it. We were there for 3 hours Saturday, getting our munch on.

My favorite place was an African stand and they sold sambusas. What is a sambusa? As far as I can tell, it is like an Indian samosa, except they are flatter and spiced differently. You all know how much I like things wrapped in pastry. These are spicy and flaky and wonderful. Last year we went two days so that we could have them again. I was a repeat of that this year.

Now that doesn’t sound much like fair food does it? Well, I also indulged in the more general fair. Spicy polish sausage, beniets covered in powdered sugar, and one of my all time favorites, roasted corn. I don’t know why it always tastes so good at the stands. It must be the butter that it is dipped in. Then I give it a healthy dose of seasoned salt and dig right in. It is so heavenly. The sweetness of the corn, the butter, the saltiness. It is the perfect treat.

Now, when I first moved to the NW, I was sadly disappointed by the fair food of this region. I am from the South, where the fair food is mostly fried and generally served on a stick. And here, for starters, there was not a fried Twinkie to be found. Instead, there were elephant ears. What? Where are the funnel cakes? And the biggest attraction was scones.

um… what? Scones? Well this is weird.

When I mentioned to friends and coworkers that I would be going to the Puyallup fair, they immediately would tell me, you have to get the scones! It sounded weird, but I’m all about taking food tips from locals. When I arrived at the fair, the line for the scone stand was really long. People were walking away with boxes of them by the dozen. I became really curious. What was the big deal with these scones? So, I finally make my way to the front and I order one, and what do I get? Well, it was essentially a white biscuit that had been cut in half and given a generous helping of butter and jam.

Now, this was a pretty good biscuit, but a biscuit all the same. People waited all year and got excited over biscuits and jam. Apparently they don’t get them enough here in Seattle. I find the incident hilarious.

But, I love fair food wherever I find it. Even if I can’t get the fried insanity of southern fairs up here, I can get a more interesting variety of foods. No sambusas at southern fairs. Here you can get phad thai, curry, and Jamaican kabobs. Also, yesterday on my second visit to the Folklife festival, after my sambusa and obligatory corn dog, I decided to give one of these elephant ear things a try, and I have to say, it was pretty darn awesome.

So, in the end. It doesn’t matter where you are, as long as someone is serving you from a stand, you’re going to find something good.