A day at the Tulsa State Fair
An odyssey of fried food.
I am from Tulsa, Oklahoma, a fact that I haven’t written about much in this newsletter. I grew up there and went to college in-state and then I moved to New York and, then recently, to Dublin. But people I love still live in Oklahoma, and due to a bunch of bleak pandemic-related logistics I had not yet introduced those people to my partner of almost two years. So Peter and I took the journey to Tulsa, which involved a nine-hour flight to Dallas, then an almost four-hour layover, then a flight to Oklahoma City and then, the next day, a two-hour drive. We were so exhausted, but when we stepped out of the airport the Oklahoma night was exactly room temperature and it felt good on our skin and we realized we didn’t need jackets anymore. Everything sprawled out before us - one of the main things to know about Oklahoma is that things are impossibly far apart - and we got in our rental car and I was the driver for once and then we were really there, on our way to my home.
Oklahoma City is all plains, but Tulsa is in the Arkansas river valley, and as you drive between cities the dirt turns from red to brown and the landscape becomes forested. We stopped at a gas station at the halfway point and Peter got an impossibly large cup of soda and a bunch of local beef jerky and we looked at all the novelty candies and shirts with wolves on them, those types of things. We’d had a big homemade breakfast that morning at my grandparent’s house: Peter’s first biscuits and gravy. There would turn out to be many food firsts on the trip, but one day contained more than any other: our day spent at the Tulsa State Fair. That’s what I’ll be focusing on today.
We went to the fair in a large group: my mom, my sister, and my brother and his fiancée. This was enjoyable but it was also a tactical move. American fair food - for those not acquainted - is all about deep-frying, large portions, and novel ingredient combinations. Think literal buckets of French fries. Think glazed doughnuts used as buns for a bacon cheeseburger. Think an entire piece of frozen cheesecake, on a stick, dipped in chocolate. These are the types of things we were up against: foods that actively rebel against your body if you try and eat more than a few bites. Luckily, we had all day.
I started off by ordering a Taki “street corn,” a chaotic variation on Mexican elote that involved a layer of crushed Fuego flavor Takis. I love Takis, so no complaints there. But the corn seemed to have been rolled in some sort of cream cheese-type substance to help the chips adhere, and that I didn’t love so much. The result was incredibly rich, which made it challenging to eat more than a couple of bites. (Of course, as noted above, we didn’t come to the fair to eat well-balanced foods.) Between the group, though, we polished it off. It wasn’t a winner for me, but it was a bold start, and sometimes that’s just what you need. Meanwhile, Peter was eating a basket of fried “alligator bites” by himself because no one else liked the texture. This made him full for quite a while - a rookie move from the out-of-towner.
We moved on, browsing through a building full of made-in-Oklahoma products. Despite the impracticality, I had to buy a huge jar of bread and butter pickles, my favorite, something you can’t find in Ireland. (Don’t worry: they made it back in one piece.) Becky ordered a foot-long corndog. David and Morgan ordered a bratwurst. We meandered back outside: it was a perfect October weather day, not too blisteringly hot, and sunny. The sky, as usual, was so big. It was time to eat more fried stuff.
We settled on cheese curds, another first for Peter: we ordered the “bucket” size, which unfortunately didn’t come in a bucket but rather in a giant paper container. In an absolutely genius move, David realized that another nearby vendor was selling dipping sauces, so he procured marinara and Ranch dressing. (It’s significantly easier to eat huge quantities of fried cheese when you have a dipping sauce - anyone who’s ordered mozzarella sticks knows this.) Fried cheese curds are magical, shockingly tender and a little squeaky and so very salty. It was easy, as a group, to polish these off. We started to be tempted by stranger creations: a signature dish at the fair this year was dill pickle pizza, which didn’t look that weird to me, honestly. The same stall would place dried scorpions on a slice of pizza for an extra fee. I’m not into those types of theatrics: I just want to eat things that have been deep-fried.
We meandered through yet another building filled with strange things for sale: exercise machines that looked like they’d been around since the 80’s, entire hot tubs on display, a very neglected Oklahoma Democratic Party booth. (We hit them up.) I saw a pecan sticky bun for sale that looked like it would change my entire life, so I decided to impulse-order. It was so good, studded with pecans suspended in gooey caramel, but was also as large as my head. Even with all of us chipping in we couldn’t get through it. Rest easy, sticky bun. I loved you.
We were starting to slow down by then, but not before consuming some deep-fried ravioli and a plate of barbecue nachos. Peter’s appetite was slowly returning post-alligator, and he had a bucket list item we hadn’t managed to acquire yet: a whole turkey leg. We located a stall at just the right moment. There was a huge line, but the wait was worth it: a perfectly burnished smoked turkey leg, wrapped in paper at the bottom so that it could be carried around King Henry VIII-style. This was Peter’s pet project, his final hill to climb. (I chipped in a couple of bites, but if I’m being honest, giant hunks of meat aren’t really my thing.) He finished it off admirably, although by the end his energy was starting to lag. We all felt it. We’d been walking and eating for hours.
The sun was setting, we’d collectively eaten somewhere in the ballpark of 20,000 calories, and the people around us were starting to get slightly chaotic. It was time to go home. Peter and I slept the deep, dreamless sleep of the righteous that night. Then we woke up the next day and ate Sonic tater tots for breakfast. After all, when it comes to fried food, our visit to Oklahoma was meant to be an eating marathon, not a sprint.
I had a very similar experience at the Minnesota State Fair back in September! A lot of the same foods as well. Fair food is such an interesting cultural artifact. Cheese curds are the very best though.