There's a lot of food at the New York State Fair. To help narrow your menu, WRVO's Ava Pukatch and Abigail Connolly tried a bunch, with one recommendation: food on a stick can never lead you astray.
We started off with a trip to Pizze Frite — Ava is a New York State Fair rookie and heard this was a "must eat" at the fair.
"I like it better than a funnel cake," Abigail said. "I think it's a little lighter on your stomach. One thing you have to watch out for — the sugar definitely falls — so they are messy."
As the sign states on the shop, the consensus was the Pizze Frite was indeed "dough-licious". We paid $5 for a two-footer.
To quench our thirst we opted to try a pickle lemonade. To make it they pour lemonade halfway, add a scoop of pickle juice and fill the rest with more lemonade. Some pickle chips are added as a garnish to the cup.
"I think they make this for people that like drinking the juice straight from the jar and this is just a way to make it more socially acceptable," Abigail said.
Pickle lemonade cost us $7.
We headed over to the Stix & Things booth next. The spot sells a variety of exotic foods on a stick featuring gator, shark, kangaroo, wild boar, elk, shrimp, chicken, steak and turkey leg. We opted to try the shark, which we learned was sourced from Boston.
The shark was one of the cheaper options of the bunch at $9.
"It tastes like most white fish," Ava said. "You can kind of taste the fishy flavor but it pretty much just tastes like most generic white fish you've had before."
Looking for a hearty lunch option we set our sights on a sausage sandwich. Almost every politician who visits the fair will eat one and we wanted to see what the hype was about.
For Ava the fair rookie, this was the moment in making her a true New Yorker. We shared the $11 sausage sandwich at Basilio Italian Sausage.
It lived up to all the hype with the pepper and onion adding just the right touch. Gov. Kathy Hochul announced Basilio will be getting a new building next year at the fair.
We ended our day visiting the Dairy Products building. The first stop: the $0.25 milk.
Both of us opted for chocolate.
"It tastes like I'm drinking soft-serve ice cream," Ava said.
"It's really cold, I'm impressed by that too," Abigail added.
We had virtually no line around 3:45 p.m. — hitting a little lull between the morning and the evening fairgoers.
And for our grand finale: frozen cheesecake on a stick from the Sterling Creek General Store in the dairy products building.
For $8.50 you can choose between plain, chocolate chip, strawberry or raspberry cheesecake with an option to be dipped or drizzled in chocolate.
Ava opted for a chocolate chip cheesecake while Abigail went with strawberry dipped in chocolate.
Our consensus? Probably the best thing we ate all day.
