Have Knife, Will Babble: Good Eats at The Canfield Fair

According to the Canfield Fair website, the fair is home to over 1,000 food stands. Sounds impressive, doesn't it? Indeed, it is impressive, horrifically impressing.

Most of the food concessions are lumped into one giant maze-like grid--block upon city block--of vendors selling (almost) exactly same stuff. When you are wandering the maze in search of something to eat, the smell of fryer grease and burnt sugar wafts through the air, overpowering all other odors, including that of the nearby farm animals.

This year was the first time I'd ever attended the Canfield Fair, though I've lived in the area since 2002. It's not that I have anything against fairs; I simply hadn't gotten around to going before this year. I arrived Friday afternoon with the storm clouds, and throughout my three hours of wandering the grounds, clouds burst open from time to time, drenching everything. This was not a problem for me, however. As a former Seattleite, I happen to love walking in the rain.

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I do have some experience with fairs and fair food. When I was a kid, my family went to several summer fairs in southern California, mostly for the rides, but I do remember eating my first corndog, and gnawing on a frozen, chocolate-dipped banana. Family remembrances of the summer we spent in Canada often center on what we did during Klondike Days. And as an adult, I thoroughly enjoyed the Walla Walla Fair as well as the Puyallup Fair, both in Washington state, though we did not go to the fair every year.

But . . . never before have I seen so many many many fried food and high fructose corn syrup vendors concentrated in one place. The sight and the smells struck me as the perfect mixture of the awesome and the aweful.

Mind you, I am not against fried foods, sweet treats, or even deep fried sweet treats. In fact, I am completely unable to resist a fresh doughnut (but it must be fresh. . . like, less-than-fifteen-minutes-old fresh). And I'm a big fan of the french fry. French fries are absolute heaven on a plate--crispy on the outside, tender, flaky and earthy on the inside--if they're done right.

The problem is that most fried food in America is not done right, and the signs at the Canfield Fair were making me shake in my rain-soaked Nikes. If I had not been starving (it was two in the afternoon and I had not eaten anything since 6:00 am), I would have run away.

Instead, I tried to focus on finding something more or less "real" to eat, something more or less sane. Undeterred, I kept looking....

...and looking....

But even when a deep fryer wasn't involved, "sane" was not on the menu.

Eventually I settled on a lamb gyros with fries and a bottle of water. After having my pronunciation of “gyros” corrected (the lady insisted that we call it a j-eye-row) and paying $14, I found a picnic table out of the rain.

The j-eye-row looked nice, like something out of a food magazine. But when I bit into it, I realized that there was about half a head of iceberg holding up just a few slices of perfectly machine-sliced, deli-meat-like lamb-like protein. The white sauce on top was plain yogurt, nothing else--no cucumbers, no herbs...nothing. And the pita bread was stale.

I removed 90% of the lettuce and chowed down nonetheless. Even if it wasn't the best gyro I'd ever had, it was more-or-less "real." It was edible.

The french fries? Not so much. It was the usual fried-food culinary disaster that comes from using frozen half-fried potato-like products, then allowing them to defrost, or half-defrost, and frying them up in not-quite-hot-enough vegetable oil. The result is not food.

The bottled water, however, was delicious.

As the downpour continued, I decided to wander indoors. As I stepped into the goat and sheep exhibit, I suddenly remembered something: The best eats at the fair are not found at the food stands. The best eats at the fair are found indoors. Just follow the gloriously pungent aroma....

Tender brisket at this end...