The Big E 2014 - Observations and Reviews, Part 2

The Eastern States Exposition runs for 17 days every September, and it's a big, raucus event. I could file a blog post about it every day (if I went every day - as it is, I head over there at least a couple days a week during the run.) After the first couple of times, I'm no longer visiting the usual attractions, I'm noticing things.

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FIRSTIES!!

One of the unsung benefits of attending a state fair really early in the morning is that you get to experience perfectly spotless unused Port-A-Potties. Seriously, check out that sparkling toilethole there. This is the first time in my half a century on earth that I've looked down the hatch and seen nothing but pristine blue poopeater. I got goosebumps. Or maybe piss shivers, it's hard to tell the difference sometimes.

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A couple of years ago, I reviewed the overcooked nastyburgers found at Yankee Boy. They're still there, behind the Better Living Center by Gate 9. Apparently kangaroo is off the menu, but now you can enjoy a camel burger if you are so inclined. I know better than to order anything here.

Here's a peek right by Yankee Boy's corrugate compactor. Apparently, they're sourcing their burgers locally from Arnold's Meats, a wholesale/retail supplier. I often buy from Arnold's, and I trust their quality. They're one of the few places around here that still grinds their own burger meat instead of bringing in chubs of industrial mince.

So the culinary horror show at Yankee Boy most likely originates at the grill.

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The purpose of an apostrophe is to alert the reader
that the word they are reading will end with an "s"

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One day, just inside Gate 9A, Post Foods set up a Cereal Tent! They were giving away samples of many of their cereals along with dollar-off coupons for use at the grocery store. I tried some old favorites like Honey Combs (they still taste like honey, but the cereal bits themselves are a lot smaller than I remember) and some new ones, like Mini Cinnamon Churros (deliciously similar to the competitor's Cinnamon Toast Crunch.) The tent was drawing a steady stream of curious customers, most of whom were old farts like me - not really the target market for stuff like Fruity Pebbles, Alpha-Bits, and Waffle Crisp.

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Yuengling Beer, which has recently been returning to the New England market, has really become a presence at the E this year. Near Gate 9A on New England Avenue, Yuengling is running a "brew pub" tent featuring several of their beers on tap. While not boomingly crowded, the tent draws a fair number of people.

And they've turned up in a number of other food service areas as well, even in places I hardly would have expected. Like here, at the Matunuck Oyster Bar, the featured beer is Yuengling. I would have expected them to be carrying Narragansett, which is made right in their Rhode Island back yard.

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Another very popular feature is the new Wine & Cheese Barn. you'll need an ID to get in, seein' as there's alcohol and stuff. There's also a long line to get in. Looking at my photo there, you'd probably think that there are only a couple of people ahead of you...

...but alas, the actual tasting area is all the way at the back of this mostly-empty building. Bring your 3DS to kill some time while you wait in line. I moved about three feet in half an hour before I decided that I could go to the liquor store and buy full bottles of wine for the price of my time at prevailing labor rates.

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Photo courtesy Eastern States Exposition

The Coliseum is the central building of the Eastern States Exposition; events here were originally the main attraction of the fair in the early part of the 20th century and the other buildings and events gradually grew up around it.

This is an interior view. For fifty years, there was ice plant under the floor and for many years, the Coliseum was the largest ice hockey venue in Western Massachusetts. Growing up, I watched the Springfield Indians (AHL), New England Whalers (WHL), and the Hartford Whalers (NHL) play there (the Hartford Whalers made the Coliseum their home-away-from-home for a short time after the Hartford Civic Center roof collapsed during the winter of 1977-78.)

My favorite events there when I was a kid, though, was the roller derby. Forty years later, I can still remember how much fun that was.

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At the far western side of the fairgrounds, near the New Hampshire building, is a large brick structure called the Hamden County Building. It houses a sort of circus museum - a large number of intricately detailed little dioramas depicting traveling show life through the mid-twentieth century. My favorite part of the exhibit is the outhouse tent - catch it at just the right angle and you can see a little guy inside taking a dump.

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The Big E 2014 - Matunuck Oyster Bar

In Rhode Island, the Matunuck Oyster Bar is justifiably renowned as one of the state's - indeed, even the country's - best oyster bars. And so it was great excitement that it was announced that they'd be opening up a raw bar at the Big E. While anything new is welcomed at the Exposition (existing businesses tend to become entrenched and the waiting list for new vendors to come in can often be years long) having Matunuck arrive at the fair was treated as an especially big deal, particularly by the local news media who went bonkers over the idea of a raw bar at the Eastern States Exposition! 

[To tell the truth, I was pretty excited by this news too - this is a New England state fair, after all, and we need more New England-oriented attractions and fewer stupid copycat crap attractions like the faux "Mardi Gras" parade.  Mardis Gras? Really? In fucking September??]

So anyway, I wandered by the oyster bar to see what all the fuss was about. The shellfish was nicely iced and looked pretty decent, and they were taking the time to shuck oysters as they were ordered to make sure everyone got the best experience possible. So I ordered half a dozen oysters for a light early lunch.

They were...okay.  Just okay. Nothing stellar, and I'm really glad I decided to order when I did, because when the fair gets crowded, there is a long queue at the ordering counter here and these oysters were, quite frankly, not worth an extended wait time. They were good enough for oysters trucked inland far from the sea, but also they were small, not very plump, and not very sweet or briny. Go to one of Matunuck's Rhode Island restaurants and you will have an awesome experience. Go to their Big E building and you will have supermarket oysters.

The condiments available for the oysters are low-grade standard as well - a slice of lemon and a cup of very bland and ketchupy cocktail sauce on the plate, and a bottle of unexceptional hot sauce at the pickup window for optional sprinkles. Horseradish was missing and very sadly missed - I would have take a big scoop of it just to mix with the cocktail sauce to try and kick up its Heinz 57ness.

Matunuck's auxiliary seating bench (a concrete flower bed.)

I'm also going to take this opportunity to bitch about the seating. Many of the food vendors (and restaurant operators) at the Big E take a crowd-oriented view of seating: they set out picnic tables in their areas and benches at the perimeters, and as folks order they find seats with strangers along with friends, kind of "boarding house" style. Sharing a space like this is common and traditional and it gets people, if not talking to each other, at least introducing themselves and exchanging a little small talk. Not at Manutuck Oyster Bar, though. They set out tiny little tables which can just about fit four people. Except a great number of couples claim tables in such a way that it makes it difficult or impossible for anyone else to sit and share a space, effectively cutting their seating capacity in half. The result of this misguided attempt at "intimate bistro seating" is that those unlucky enough not to find a seat are forced to wander out to the back alley and sit on the concrete edge of the flower bed ringing the New England Center building. There's a great view of the electrical transformer and the service area/trash barrels for the various food vendors. At least it was convenient to be able to just walk a step or two to throw away the shells.

The Big E 2014 - Observations and Reviews, Part 1

The Big E - The Eastern States Exposition - is a six-state state fair where all of New England is represented. It runs for seventeen days in September of every year, and I always try to spend some time there. Tickets are $15 for a single day entry, but for $40 you can get a pass that's good for the full run of the fair so that's what I usually do. I spend enough time there petting sheep, talking to goats, and watching cattle judging that the pass easily pays for itself.

I try to get there early - before 9:00 AM. Most of the exhibit buildings don't open until 10, so there aren't too many people wandering around first thing in the morning. Employees and vendors, mostly. The grounds aren't crowded, but they are bustling. Vendors and hucksters are tidying up their kiosks and trucks roll though with deliveries. Everyone wants to get their supplies laid in before 9:30 when vehicles are banished from the fairgrounds for the day, because anything that needs to be brought in after that has to be rolled in by hand.

I like hanging around the fairgrounds early, because I like to see how things work. There are usually a couple of boom trucks travelling around replacing light bulbs on vendor's marquee signs and crews are coming through toting supplies, making sure trash and recycling containers are set, and making other last-minute preparations.

One of the first places to open up is the West Springfield Fire House restaurant on the northwest side of the grounds between Gate 2 and Gate 4. They serve one of the best breakfasts at or away from the fair - two eggs any style, toast, home fries, bacon AND ham, with coffee, for just eight dollars. (Breakfast sandwiches are also available.) You pick up your food and pay cafeteria-style, and there are plenty of seats in the dining area (a lot of the seating is at big round tables where everyone grabs a seat family-style.) The breakfasts are generous, and I always make it my first stop. It's a lot easier to resist the lure of deep-fried state fair junkfood when there's a decent meal under your belt.

Next to open after the restaurants are the vendors. Many of them are happy to serve customers even while they're getting set up for the day, and by 9:30 or so they're already making sales. I found one cool place selling handcrafted glass spheres in various designs - including huge eyeballs.

Each of the New England states has a building dedicated just to them. Those buildings, highlighting the agriculture and selected industries of each state, open at 10. On our first visit of the year, we usually go to the state buildings right after they open, before the crowds start to pour in. We also make it a point to visit the agricultural exhibits in the morning.

By 1:30 or 2 in the afternoon, the fairgrounds are packed and the experience gets somewhat less fun. That's about the time we head for the car, leaving the crowd behind. It's nice to know that we can come back again when the "rush" is over since we have the passes.

The Big E 2014 - The Maine Building

I'm spending some quality time at the Eastern States Exposition over the next couple of weeks, so prepare for a bunch of "state fair" types of posts. Everybody writes about the bizarre deep-fried junk food at state fairs (even me) so I'm taking a different tack this time around and telling you about other cool stuff there is to do and eat at the E. This series starts off at the Maine Building.

Let's start off with one of the most bad-ass food trucks I've ever seen.  It's parked behind the Maine building and it's owned and operated by Pizza Pie On The Fly from Portland. It is a genuine Italian-made wood-fired pizza oven on the back of restored 1949 International KB-6. I dearly love both wood-fired ovens and old trucks, so eating pizza and chatting with the crew before the lunch crowd rush was the highlight of my morning.

Pizza margherita: cheese, fresh sliced tomatoes, fresh basil.

But I know you're more interested in the pizza than you are in the truck. Over the course of a couple of days, I tried a slice each of plain cheese, pepperoni, and margherita.

Once upon a time, I used to say that it was impossible to find a decent pizza in Maine. But if Ryan Carey's Pizza Pie On The Fly represents pizza in southern Maine, I might have to take that back.

All of the pizzas are decent, thin-crust New York-style pies - that is to say, they have a thin and tender but chewy inner crust and should be folded as you take your first bites. The portions are generous: about a quarter of a 16-inch pie. The cheese and pepperoni pies were very good and typical of their kind, but the margherita was really great. Since excellent field-grown tomatoes are still in season right now, I would have been disappointed if the tomatoes were lousy, but they weren't. They were fresh and plump and tasted like they had been picked that morning. Combined with the delicious fresh basil and gently melted cheese, it made for a great breakfast.

Pro tip if you try them out: Go at a busier time when the pizzas are really cranking out of the blazing-hot oven. Air temps at the fair have only been in the low 70s, and pizza cools quickly under an awning. If it's not busy, though, you might ask the guys to slide your slice back into the oven for a minute or two to warm up, and then you'll have a chance to talk to them about their own love of pizzas and old trucks.

And if you're at the Maine building and you don't want to stand in a half-hour line for a baked potato, you can stop at Sebastian's Smoke House for a piece of delicious smoked salmon (it's almost as good as my own homemade.) Sebastian's also sells Cap'n Eli's Blueberry Pop, which tastes like real blueberries, not like that artificial (but still delicious) Blue Berry flavor.

They've got Cap'n Eli's Root Beer there, too, and can make you a genuine root beer float if you've a hankering for one.

Other features of the Maine building include fresh wild blueberry pie, maple syrup and candy, lobster rolls (a great deal at $10.00) and a barbecue out back - across the patio from the pizza truck - serving wicked good pulled pork. And of course, there's that baked potato, which is pretty famous and will necessitate a wait in line.

State Fair Food at the Big E: Big E Cream Puffs

Sixth in a series about State Fair Food as served at the 2012 Big E (New England's Great State Fair)

For many people who attend the Big E, the signature food of the fair is not a donut-padded bacon cheeseburger or a batter-dipped deep fried monstrosity. It's a cream puff.

First introduced at the fair in 2002, the Big E Cream Puff was intended to be the "signature dessert" of the 17-day event, and it achieved that goal almost immediately - they were a huge hit that first year and have remained enormously popular ever since (the bakery sells more than 60,000 thousand of them during the run of the fair.) And it's easy to see why - the pastry is melt-in-your-mouth tender, and the cream filling isn't some cheap-ass lard-and-sugar bastardization, it's real 42% butterfat cream, sweetened and whipped to within a few minutes of turning into butter. It's decadent and gorgeous and velvety smooth, and I buy one a year, which my wife Maryanne and I share.

I think that the quality of the ingredients is only one of the factors involved in the cream puffs' popularity. The Big built a state-of-the-art bakery into the west side of The New England Center building where the cream puffs and their companion pastries, The Big Eclair, are made from scratch. That bakery is fronted on three sides by big glass windows that allow patrons of the fair to watch the pastries being made from beginning to end. It attracts quite a crowd, of both onlookers and buyers.

And it doesn't seem to matter what time of day you get there to buy your cream puff fix - there seems always to be a line (although, to be fair, the folks behind the counter at the bakery are friendly and efficient and the line moves fairly quickly.)

Cream puffs are $3.75 each and are available individually to eat right there at one of the surrounding picnic tables and benches, or you can get a bunch of them boxed to take home.

State Fair Food at the Big E: Fried Cheese Curds

Fifth in a series about State Fair food as served at the 2012 Big E (New England's Great State Fair)

If you live in New England or the Midwest US you probably know what cheese curds are and you've probably eaten them a time or two. For the rest of you, I'm faced with the task of trying to describe them. I guess the best way is to just call them "immature cheese." Cheese curds are the solid bits of curdling milk which, when processed and pressed together and aged, eventually become the sliced cheese you're more familiar with.

Really fresh cheese curds are kind of weird to eat. They're mild and milky-tasting, and very soft. They squeak against your teeth when you chew them - it's kind of cool, and also kind of creepy. But that squeak is also the key to knowing how fresh the curds are - as they age, the squeakiness fades and finally vanishes (and that can happen in as little as a day!) That's why when you buy cheese curds in a sealed plastic bag from the supermarket they're usually not really soft or squeaky.

Anyway, this whole lesson in the freshness of cheese curds is solely so you have a frame of reference for the fried cheese curds sold by The Big Cheese at the Big E. As we were strolling along the concession-laden boulevard between the Better Living Center and the Avenue of the States,The Big Cheese caught Lynnafred's eye because cheese curds are one of her favorite snacks. We've had fried cheese curds at KFC before and they were okay but never awesome, because at KFC the curds are soft and mild but never fresh enough to squeak.

Ah, but not the fried curds from The Big Cheese. They're lightly coated in batter and quickly fried until they're soft and warm inside but crispy and golden outside. And they squeak! Awesome!

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Roma Ketchup

This industrial-sized tank of ketchup was on the condiment table at one of the burger-n-fries joints at The Big E:

I took a picture of it because, knowing nothing about ketchup labeling standards, the idea that ketchup could be "33% Fancy" amused me.  I guess the other two-thirds of the stuff in the can was, what? Ordinary? Floor sweepings?

The USDA took the lulz out of the label, though. The "33% Fancy" is simply a USDA ketchup grade.  There are three USDA grades for ketchup: Standard, with 25% total tomato solids; Extra Standard, with 29% total tomato solids; and Fancy, with 33% total tomato solids.

In case you're wondering, Roma's 33% Fancy Tomato Ketchup is every bit as good as Heinz.




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State Fair Food at the Big E: Deep-Fried Shepherd's Pie

Fourth in a series about State Fair food as served at the 2012 Big E (New England's Great State Fair.)

We were tipped off to the existence of this food by a friend of Lynnafred's, and immediately went in search of it. Luckily, it seems like many of the strangest foods at The Big E are tightly grouped at the Food Court near the midway, and we found it at EB's Food For Fun, where it's rhymingly marketed as "Country Fry Shepherd's Pie."

As you can see, Country Fry Shepherd's Pie is served in the form of five rather average-sized "meatballs," breaded and fried and topped with brown gravy.

Inside, they're only a little scary, with cooked ground beef mixed with mashed potato binder and a few kernels of sweet corn sprinkled randomly throughout.  They aren't all that bad, crispy on the outside and soft and moist through the middle, and fairly well-seasoned. The only complaint we had about them was that the frying oil needed desperately to be changed - it was old and gross, and gave the food a vague aftertaste of oldness and grossness. I think EB's could do a little better with that, especially since they were getting $6.50 for it.

Oh, and one more pedantic little note: There wasn't any lamb or mutton in them, so they weren't Country Fry Shepherd's Pie, they were Country Fry Cottage Pies.  Listen up, America: Shepherd's Pie has lamb/mutton/sheep in it. Shepherd's Pie, get it? Shepherd? Sheep? See?? (OK, I'm done now.)

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State Fair Food at The Big E: Pulled Pork Stuffed Corn Cake

Second in a series about State Fair Food as served at the 2012 Big E (New England's Great State Fair)

Lunchtime at a state fair is nothing if not a world of possibilities, and not all of those possibilities are deep-fried. Sometimes, you can find something interesting where you least expect it. 

As an example, we were passing through a section of the Big E fairgrounds on our way elsewhere, when Lynnafred stopped dead in her tracks, eyes wide. She was gazing at a cinnamon bun concession as she said, "Dad. Pulled pork stuffed corn cake. It looks...terrifying."  Terrifying things are often rewarding, though, so we approached for a closer look.

Each Pulled Pork Stuffed Corn Cake starts with a big scoop of sweet corn cake divoted down in the center to form a well. This is topped with a scoop of cole slaw, then piled high with slow-cooked pulled pork and squirted over with a big dose of Sweet Baby Ray's barbecue sauce.

When I ordered, I asked that the slaw be put on the side, because I'm deeply suspicious of cole slaw that is not of my own creation lest it ruin the overall enjoyability of the dish. My suspicions were, however, unwarranted.

Each of the components of the pulled pork stuffed corn cake are very good:

• The corn cake is actually a sweet corn cake, similar to the kind you can make from a mix available at the supermarket under Hormel's Chi-Chi's label. It's very moist and rich and studded with kernels of corn, and makes a good base for a dish like this.
• The cole slaw is mostly slivered cabbage with a small amount of carrot, very little sugar, and a healthy shot of horseradish, making for a more savory than sweet slaw.
• The pulled pork is very tender and nicely done, though it is a little on the light side when it comes to smoke flavoring. I have a feeling that it's done in an oven rather than in a barbecue pit, but I'm not going to complain because it's moist and porky and I'm eating it at a state fair, not at Little Bubba's  BBQ Pit somewhere.
• The whole pile is topped with Sweet  Baby Ray's barbecue sauce, which isn't a super premium homemade sauce, but it isn't totally heinous.

So, what do you get when you take four kinda ordinary ingredients and combine them on a paper tray?  You get magic is what.

The overall effect is just awesome.  Every component of the dish works with the other parts in a way that makes them better than they are alone. Even the cole slaw was a great addition, because the sharp horseradish modulates the sweetness of the BBQ sauce and corn cake.

If you're looking for a break from the relentless parade of fried fair food, you could do a lot worse than this.

Pulled Pork Stuffed Corn Cake.  $10, Sold by Scirrotto's Cinnamon City at the 2012 Big E, at the southwest corner of the Young Building.

Quick Takes at The Big E

A few interesting things noticed at The Big E on Saturday...

The flower beds in front of the Brooks Building on the Big E grounds were filled with colorful pepper plants bordered with marigolds. The peppers were green, red, orange, and yellow and Lynnafred and I couldn't resist picking a few to see if they were edible. They were.

From their appearance, I figured they were Thai Hot Peppers, and a quick enquiry inside the Brooks Building confirmed this - they simply phoned up the groundskeepers and asked.

Unfortunately, these Thai Hots would have been better named "Thai Milds." They had the smoky peppery flavor of Thai peppers, but none of the heat. I even tried chewing a couple of the seeds, but to no avail.

We bumped into this very cool junk art statue of an ear of corn inside the New Hampshere building. The corn is made entirely of plastic milk jugs which have been painted pale yellow in the interest of realism and lulz.

And over in the Connecticut building, one of the central booths was dedicated to tobacco, which is perhaps our most famous crop. Special qualities of the soil and climate in the Connecticut River Valley make the area ideal for growing broadleaf tobacco, used to wrap some of the best cigars in the world.  At the exhibit, a young lady was busy hand-rolling the cigars which were for sale right there.

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