What to eat at MontanaFair vikings twinkies texas twister

You can deep fry anything here: hot dogs, candy bars, snack cakes, Swedish meatballs, pork chops, whatever you’ve got. If you handed them a beach ball, they’d at least give it a shot. The only rule is to go big. 

Deep frying is like baptism. It turns the ordinary holy.

This is America, in all its absurdities and contradictions. It’s loud, smelly, expensive, silly, ostentatious, and we still go back every time.  

And why not? The fair only comes around once a year, and at MontanaFair at least, runs for just over a week. Why not indulge if you’re only going to do it one night a year? If you could get a fried candy bar at every gas station, then maybe we’d have a problem. 

For as long as there have been fairs, there’s been fair food. The two go together so well that you’re never really sure if the aroma of fried meats is real or a sort of Pavlovian response triggered by the noise of ride-goer’s screams. 

I’ve been attending MontanaFair for decades, and it’s always been like this. Because honestly, all fairs have always been like this. 

It’s fitting that these spaces continue to be culinary innovators. The World’s Columbian Exposition, which took over Chicago for the summer (and most of the spring and the fall) of 1893, was sort of a debutante ball for subgroups of American food culture. It’s where Milton Hershey first got the equipment to start making chocolate. Juicy Fruit gum made its grand debut at the fair, as did brownies, peanut butter and the baseball mainstay Cracker Jack. America must have been on a health kick, because Cream of Wheat, Quaker Oats and Shredded Wheat also first popped up at the Chicago fair. Per legend, Pabst Brewing Company dubbed their flagship product Pabst Blue Ribbon after it won “America’s Best” in Chicago. That part’s probably not true, but every culture needs its creation myth. 

The most notable food unveiled in Chicago might be Vienna Sausages, which were sold at Midway Plaisance public park on the Windy City’s south side. The sausage was the precursor to the modern hot dog, a culinary masterclass you can’t avoid if you go to a fair, and the venue is the reason we still refer to fair’s main drags as “midways.” This is basically the Book of Genesis for American food. 

That’s where it starts, but if you want to see how fair food is faring now, all you need is $12 and an empty stomach. That’ll get you into MontanaFair, which is sprawled all over MetraPark until Saturday. There are food stalls all over the grounds, but the main contingency are lined up at “Midway Food Row” along the fair’s eastern terminus, and “Heritage Park,” which butts up against Highway 312. 

You’ll find it all here, from super specific fair vendors to what feels like every food truck in town — an incomplete list features Opa Grill, It’s Roasted, Mountain Mud and Mountain Acai kiosks, Stuff’d, Pop’s Tots, the Corn Dog Company, Dax’s Wings N Thingz and plenty more.   

You can get a crash course in fair food at MontanaFair not just because it’s got a lot of it but because the best and the brightest of modern fair food is represented here. One booth is selling cookies overflowing from a plastic bucket, a nod to the Minnesota State Fair’s iconic Sweet Martha’s Cookie Jar (we are, tragically, missing the all-you-can-drink milk available in Minnesota). Right across from there is a stand hawking pork chops served on a stick, a food so integral to the Iowa State Fair it’s become tradition for presidential candidates to debase themselves by gobbling them up to win favor before the Iowa Caucuses. 

I started my culinary journey with MontanaFair’s marquee item, the Viking, a food which boldly asks what would happen if a corndog was good. Vikings are available at the Sons of Norway booth for $8, and trust me, you’d happily pay $16 if they asked. It’s a miracle food, a Swedish meatball battered and deep fried and served on a stick. Ketchup, mustard and horseradish are all available, but you won’t need them. The meatball is heavy on the onion and perfectly spiced, a good antidote to anyone who claims that white people don’t season their food. The Sons of Norway calls it “The Viking on the Stick,” and the singularity of that seems puzzling until you eat one. When you’re lucky enough to be holding a Viking, it really does feel like that’s the only stick in the world — or the only one that matters, anyway.

Pair it with a couple rolls of lefse — a super-thin potato pancake that’s a major food group for anyone whose last name ends in -son — and you could easily put back a couple of Vikings and call it a day. The food is so popular that there was an uproar when the Montana State Fair in Great Falls announced it wouldn’t be serving them this year. (The blunder was due to the booth not having adequate fire suppression installed, but if you’re going to die, you might as well be in close proximity to fried meat). 

But the name of the game at the fair is variety and things you can eat without having to sit down or use utensils. So with that in mind, you owe it to yourself to get a turkey leg. I’ve always considered them stunt food, useful only for embarrassing pictures and Instagram posts. Usually you only eat turkey legs when it’s five days after Thanksgiving and all the other cuts are gone, but not at MontanaFair. 

They’re available at a few spaces at MontanaFair, and they’re all smoked, which turns that gristly, tough piece of dark meat into a mahogany hued savory treat that’s one of the most tender cuts I’d ever eaten. So much so that the whole thing fell off the bone and onto the picnic table a few bites in. There might not be a dirtier place on the planet than a table at a fair, but I still scooped up as much meat as I could guarantee didn’t touch the wood. You won’t find a better vote of confidence than that. 

My advice here is to take in a few rides, if only because after a turkey leg, you’ll have so much meat stuck in your teeth that needs to be shaken loose in the way only a Zipper or Tilt-a-Whirl can. Plus, for for any kids who are super into 19th century literature there’s a ride called Moby Dick. And there’s Raiders, a sort of giant jungle gym that is emblazoned with an airbrushed and assuredly unlicensed photo of Indiana Jones. 

This far into the adventure, you need something to drink. I was content with MetraPark branded bottled water until I saw the Texas Twister booth. I’m a sucker for any food item that has its own back story, and according to a little plaque in front of the booth, the Texas Twister was invented in 1997 in Tyler, Texas, home of the East Texas State Fair. 

The smallest size of Texas Twister is 16 ounces, and if you’ve got $14 to burn, you can get $46 ounces of the stuff served in a “souvenir boot.” You also get the choice of a spicy rim or candy coated rim. I went with the later, as earlier in this I called a Swedish meatball “perfectly spiced” so you can guess my spice tolerance.

It’s refreshing, if oppressively sweet and citrus heavy. A copycat recipe I found online involves six oranges, six lemons, six limes, grenadine, maraschino cherry syrup, eight cups of Sprite and, for sweetness, a quarter cup of sugar. And if you do go with the frozen one, make sure to savor it. Brain freezes are one of those many things that were minor annoyances as a child and make you feel like you’re dying as an adult. 

All these calories would be lonely without dessert, and here was my first misstep. I’ve never had a fried Twinkie, or ever really desired one. But they’ve been all the rage at fairs for decades now (one of the supposed inventors is from England, a useful tidbit to keep in mind next time a European tries to call Americans gluttonous). They fry the thing fresh right in front of you, and it comes out steaming hot and golden brown.

And guess what, that thing that doesn’t sound very good isn’t very good. It’s an exercise in absurdity, a Twinkie that’s somehow even Twinkie-er than it was before. 

Just skip it, and instead get the greatest fair snack of them all: a funnel cake. Here we dispense with any nonsense about needing to deep fry a specific thing and just deep fry the batter itself. Brought to America by the Pennsylvania Dutch, the same folks who gave us perfectly American dishes like root beer, pot pie, coleslaw and apple dumplings, it’s only fitting that the funnel cake would become America’s greatest fair food. You can get them all over MontanaFair, and one stand dispenses with any pageantry and just advertises “fried dough.” Why mess with perfection? 

All that imbibed, you’re finally ready to roll out of MetraPark and face the world. Or just take a nap. Or go back later that day for another Viking. It’ll be a long winter before we all meet here again next August.