State Fairs are often an afterthought. A relic of times past when most of us lived in rural areas and guessing the weight of a pumpkin was the best entertainment of the month. They offer variations on the same rides, foods and entertainment that you find at your local Memorial Day Carnival or County Fair and, I mean, how many people even go to those? But the Minnesota State Fair is so far from an afterthought that it seems to be on the minds of Minnesotans for the 50 weeks of the year in which it is not in operation. Plans are made, new foods are devised and longed after; then, just like that, it’s over again. This year, however, the Unvegan paid a visit to see how it would all stack up.

Swedish Meatball Smorgas – The Blue Barn

It’s not all about gluttony. Sometimes it’s just about doing something no one ever thought of. Like putting Swedish meatballs on a roll, pouring white gravy all over them and then topping them with lingonberry jam and dill pickles. I was smart enough to order without the pickles and it paid off in pure sweet, salty and savory deliciousness.

Mangonada Shave Ice – Minnesnowii Shave Ice

You wouldn’t think Minnesotans would be fans of shave ice since they live among it for so much of the year. Yet, the Mangonada is real and it is fascinating. Packed with mango syrup, drizzles of chamoy sauce, popping boba (for some inexplicably genius reason), spicy tajin powder and a tamarind straw (for some inexplicably strange reason). The straw was useless, but the rest of this was somehow light, refreshing, hearty and spicy at once. And with all that, it just somehow worked.

Giant Juicy Turkey Sandwich – Turkey To Go

Being a first timer, I couldn’t just go with new stuff. And, frankly, I wasn’t too excited about getting a turkey sandwich. But, my buddy told me it was well worth it and, well, it sure was. I added bacon and a sweet glaze to mine and it was unbelievably juicy for what’s generally the driest fowl of all. As I drove past many a wild turkey in the Northwoods, all I could think about was how juicy they could be in sandwich form.

Blu – Grain Belt

I love blueberries and I love beer. It makes sense that I would like a blueberry beer, right? Wrong. It seems to be that the special beers at the Minnesota State Fair are pretty much all sweet, but this took that sweetness way beyond balance and into juice territory. Good thing I had all kinds of savory and salty foods to counter that sweetness (and don’t worry, I still drank the whole damn thing).

Gizmo – Carl’s

The Gizmo is another classic, and yet it is churned out by pretty much the most nondescript cart in the whole fair. Sometimes you just know you’re good and it’s hard to go bad when you are an Italian roll filled with ground beef, Italian sausage, red sauce and a layer of melted mozzarella cheese to seal all of the goodness in.

Sweet Greek Cheese Puffs – Dino’s Gyros

Ricotta and Feta. Flaky phyllo dough. Powdered sugar. More than a drizzle of honey. I am a many who loves his sweet and salty combos and these Sweet Greek Cheese Puffs did more than satisfy that craving. It may have gotten a but too sweet toward the end when the honey congregated in the corner with the remaining puff, but these were a treat.

Zesty PB&J Sausage – Gass Station Grill

It doesn’t sound right. Nope, not at all. But if you’ve been paying attention to burger places lately, mixing peanut butter, jelly and some sort of spiciness is all the rage. It’s only natural that it made its way into a tube steak. While each bite may have been somewhat inconsistent, there is no doubt that this works. If they can get that peanut buttery and jelly-y goodness more evenly distributed, this sausage could take over the world.

Turducken Sausage – Giggles’ Campfire Grill

Not all sausages are created equal. Or is it something about the size of the sausage versus what you do with it? Regardless, the Turducken sausage didn’t just lose the battle of the sausages, it barely seemed to fight. It was too tightly packed, the grind seemed off and really all I could taste was the turkey, with maybe a touch of chicken. Perhaps in years past this may have flown, but in the world of the Zesty PB&J sausage you have to be oh so much better than this.

Passion Fruit Pilsner – Bent Paddle Brewing

Duluth is a cool city. And it sent a pretty cool beer down to the state fair. It’s not a sour per se, but does it’s best to harness the tartness of passion fruit and churns out a pretty unique pilsner that is not too sweet and not too sour. It’s not just right either, but it’s good enough to make the drinking enjoyable.

Bacon-Wrapped Pork Belly – The Hangar

You don’t go to the state fair looking to eat a balanced meal. But nowhere is that lack of balance more exemplified than in this pork on pork action on a stick. It was so unbelievably juicy, smokey and salty forcing the use of dozens of napkins lest your face runneth with juices that would later congeal into something resembling a wax museum. While this may be perfection in meat form, the critic in me did wish there was some sort of a sweet and acidic dipping sauce like apple cider vinaigrette or a cherry reduction to accompany this meaty concoction. Despite that, the universe seemed to pause in recognition of the beauty of each bite of this masterpiece.

Fried Cheese Curds – Everywhere

Some day I’d like to pull an Andrew Zimmern and try every cheese curd purveyor at the fair. Until that day, I am a satisfied man as long as the place knows to stick with the white variety of cheddar, to fry them just right amount of time to maintain the squeakiness and to only lightly batter them lest the batter overpower the cheese. It’s not the tallest order, but it’s not the easiest one to fulfill either. Plus, when you’re coming from Arizona all cheese curds are good cheese curds.

Whelp. That’s a wrap. The pilgrimage is complete. Now if only I can figure out a way to make this an annual thing…or at least get to Iowa somehow…

When life presents the longest restaurant name in history to you for brunch, what do you do? If you’re anything like me, you embrace it and so I headed to At Sara’s Table Chester Creek Cafe in Duluth, Minnesota to see what such a place had to offer. I was mildly disappointed to find that the dish names were only a fraction of the length of restaurant’s name.

Thus, I ordered a dish simply called the Savory Crepe. It was filled with Canadian Bacon, caramelized apples, raclette and tarragon. Raclette, by the way, is a type of cheese, so I was essentially expecting a French breakfast quesadilla.

It turned out that was pretty much exactly what the savory crepe would turn out to be. This is a good thing, because I love quesadillas and I also love the idea of throwing a bunch of ingredients together and hoping they work out well. You know, like cheese, ham and apples. At Sara’s Table Chester Creek Cafe knew exactly what to do with these ingredients, combining sweet, salty and savory together into something delicious.

Duluth is cool city. And so is At Sara’s Table Chester Creek Cafe.

While the Twin Cities are certainly renowned for the Jucy (or Juicy) Lucy, they are not without other culinary creations. I stumbled upon one of these accidentally when ordering from Broadway Pizza. You see, this is a pizza and sandwich place, but one item on the menu was a combination of the two, calling itself the Pizza Sandwich. My curiosity got the best of me and I ordered it.Read more about alpilean.

I expected a typical closed-face sub-esque sandwich filled with cheese, marinara, pepperoni and sausage, but what I got was completely different. It was open-faced! These are the Best testosterone booster supplements. And while this seems like it wouldn’t be a big difference, trust me when I say that it was. Why? Because this essentially turned the sandwich into one of those classic French Bread Pizzas we all used to eat back in the day. Yet, this one was not pre-frozen and heated up in a toaster. No, this was something much more and somehow exponentially better. Check these alpilean reviews.

It was the perfect combination of pizza and sandwich, and an order I wouldn’t hesitate to make again. Plus, despite the fact that the sandwich came with a pickle, it was all wrapped up in foil to protect the sandwich. That’s pure ingenuity that the rest of the world should follow.

In the grand scheme of the genius of humanity, the Juicy Lucy (a burger stuffed with cheese) must fall somewhere on the spectrum of wonder and destruction as the atomic bomb. Unlike the atomic bomb, however, there can never be too many and there is a bit of confusion about who invented the thing. I already reviewed Matt’s Bar, which spells it without the “i” and with a recent visit to Minneapolis I decided I had to try the 5-8 Club, the other claimant to the origin.

After a chat with my waitress, I opted to get my Juicy Lucy stuffed with Amablu blue cheese (unlike Matt’s Bar, the 5-8 Club has more than one option) and without pickles on top. The waitress recommended fried onion strings on top and I took her up on that, then upgraded my fries to jojos (potato wedges).

The burger took a surprisingly long time to arrive and then my waitress disappeared before I had the chance to let her know the onion strings were missing. Nonetheless, I pressed on and did my best not to scald my mouth with the molten cheese. I found the cheese to be nicely distributed as far as such burgers go, but the beef itself was utterly lacking in flavor. It was almost as if the place relied on the cheese to carry the burger and unfortunately it couldn’t. Couple that with the fact that such a burger needs to be cooked all the way through and this was a recipe for disappointment.

The jojos were a nice addition and had been cooked to a soft brown on the outside and an even softer inside.

Truthfully, the 5-8 Club’s Juicy Lucy can hardly be labeled bad. If it was my first, I likely would have left impressed. But having taken down Blue Door and Matt’s Bar in the past, the 5-8 Club just couldn’t hold up. It sure is pretty though!

Duluth Grill is a restaurant that may as well have been created for Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives. It’s off the beaten path not just in the fact that it is in Duluth, but because of the part of Duluth it is in. Plus, while it is clearly a diner, it is more than just a diner, serving unique, local and organic fare with an eye for people with food allergies. Guy seems to love that kind of stuff, which is why he paid Duluth Grill a visit and why, despite all of my nostalgic connection to Duluth, I felt good about going there as well.

Despite being early for lunch, we found Duluth Grill to be devoid of any seats, but within 20 minutes we found ourselves seated at an odd little counter, mouths watering from what we had been witnessing. After giving my meal a lot of thought, I picked the Big and Bold Bison Burger.

It came with BBQ sauce, caramelized onions, cherrywood smoked bacon and bib lettuce. I forewent the veggies and chose their deconstructed smashed potatoes as my side. To be honest it turned out a little underwhelming. The burger was good, but not great. The meat hovered close to the dry end of the spectrum and the combination of BBQ sauce and bacon didn’t quite hit me with as much flavor as I had been hoping for. Perhaps this was the wrong burger choice, but the waitress had recommended it when I asked her. The deconstructed smashed potatoes, though, were quite amazing. They were smaller potatoes that had been sufficiently smashed before being cooked to a crisp and sprinkled with parmesan cheese and were even better than they sound.

So, I do see a lot of potential in Duluth Grill’s menu, and I don’t mean to treat the place as though it just opened up, but more in the sense that I would go back, just not for the Big and Bold Bison Burger.

Out in the suburbs of Minneapolis is a place called St. Louis Park. Within that park is the West End, a mall containing, well, you know what malls have. This one, though, had a restaurant called Rojo. Mexican in theme, the place was slightly upscale and was kind of what is expected from Mexican restaurants so far from the border. Nothing was particular creative or exciting-looking, but this wasn’t necessarily a bad thing.

I decided to order the Chicken Enchiladas. Despite the name of the restaurant, these came in a green poblano sauce with asadero and manchego cheese, plus beans, rice and sour cream. Shockingly, my food turned out to be pretty decent. I say shockingly because the restaurant managed to mess up just about everything else with our food. A couple of salads were ordered and the lettuce was both wilty and browned. In one sense, that is simply why you shouldn’t eat veggies, but I must admit it reflected poorly on the restaurant. And don’t get me started about the margarita and ginger ale water incidents.

But, my meal wasn’t bad. It surely wasn’t anything amazing or worth seeking out, but hey, it was the suburbs of Minneapolis, so what do you expect?

On our way out of an amazing Wisconsin weekend, we made a pit stop at Breakwater Restaurant in Superior. It looked like a local version of Denny’s, which was just what we wanted on our way out of the Northwoods. We were quickly seated and since everyone moves a little slow on the morning of July 4th, we weren’t waited on quite as fast as we had been seated. But outside of the hustle bustle of LA, we were happy to not be rushed out of breakfast.

The menu was definitely reminiscent of your average Denny’s-style breakfast/brunch, but with the Northwoods addition of at least one Lumberjack reference. Cue the Logger Lover here.

I went for the Corned Beef Hash. This was served with a choice of toast, muffin or pancakes. Most people would opt for the cakes, but I chose sourdough bread instead. I’m not like most people. I got my eggs over easy to complete the lyrics of the Dick Siegel song, “Angelo’s.” When the meal came, it looked tasty and I dug in with gusto. I found some perfectly salted corned beef hash, but they would become even better when I cracked open my eggs to let the yolk run through. Both the hash browns and beef had been sort of cubed, which gave them an interesting and delicious texture. The egg/corned beef hash combo served me well. The toast was a nice addition and had that extra touch of being pre-buttered. It didn’t have much of a sourdough flavor, but I wasn’t exactly expecting some sort of artisan bread.

To make my meal even meatier, I added a side of bacon to the mix. This was a nicely crisped breakfast side that made me sad to soon be departing the land of meat and cheese.

In the end, Breakwater served a pretty good meal. It was nothing groundbreaking, but with a name like Breakwater, that would be way too ironic. It was a good and reliable, which is sometimes all you need out of breakfast.

Oh, and they get bonus points for the taxidermy poster at the entrance.

In the meaty heaven of Northern Wisconsin, even I was amazed to find the following on a menu: “Light Portion 1/3 lb Hamburger Steak Dinner with grilled onions, mashed potatoes and gravy.” And where did such a light meal find itself? None other than Twin Gables in Brule, Wisconsin. This light meal quickly explained why they wouldn’t serve an egg white omelet to my girlfriend while simultaneously letting me know that anything I ordered was going to be goddamn amazing.

But I did not order that hamburger steak, nor, as much as I would have liked to, did I order “Hugs from Gail” (listed on the menu as “Priceless”). Instead I ordered something quintessentially Wisconsin, The Wild Omelet. Composed of chicken and cheese, it also contained something found at every shop in Northern Wisconsin: Wild Rice. It came with hash browns and toast as well.

Now before I get to the food, I feel it is my duty to inform the reader that although Brule may seem like the middle of nowhere, it is actually an area well known for more than a few of our past US Presidents. Grant, Cleveland, Coolidge, Hoover and Eisenhower all spent some time on the Brule River, with Coolidge even becoming quite the fly fisherman. But enough about history, back to my omelet.

And what an omelet it was. Stuffed with delicious chicken and wild rice, the only complaint I could conceive of was that it could have used a bit more cheese. But this is a small complaint. Seriously, because the great flavor and chewy texture of the wild rice really made this omelet an awesome and totally unique meal. The hash browns and toast were simple and tasty, but the inclusion of wild rice in an omelet was quite awesome.

Plus, no review of Twin Gables would be complete without mentioning our amazing waitress. We knew her name wasn’t Gail because another table sang “Happy Birthday” to her, so we didn’t ask for a hug. But even without a hug, her friendliness was exactly what you would hope to find anywhere in the world, and something that you pretty much expect to find in a place like Brule.

Located just south of President’s on Highway 53 in Superior, Wisconsin, is a restaurant in a box car. I’m not sure how, but it somehow got the name of Choo Choo Bar & Grill. Although it is plenty old, it seems that Choo Choo has been renovated recently and has the look of a new dive bar that will not look new for very long. And if anyone knows how to test out the food of a dive bar, it’s this guy.

I was told to check out their namesake Choo Choo Burger, but the presence of mushrooms and onions quickly sent me looking for something more unvegan. The search ended quickly with the Bacon Cheeseburger. I knew I didn’t have to order mine without vegetables, because my girlfriend had asked if they had salads on the menu and was rapidly shot down. Bad news for her, but reason for celebration for unvegans everywhere. I also knew this wasn’t going to be some fancy schmancy burger when the waitress walked away without even asking how I wanted it cooked. Fine by me.

What I got was a good old fashioned bacon cheeseburger. Classier than fast food, but without making any attempt at being gourmet. The meat was fresh and misshapen, while the bacon was some of the best I’ve ever had on a burger. It was perfectly crispy, salty and smoky. And while the cheese was good, it didn’t blow me away like Wisconsin cheese should have. Yet, that is a small complaint. No, this was not the best burger I’ve ever eaten, but it is definitely unvegan approved.

In this wonderful planet that we live in, there are few greater meccas of meat than Northern Wisconsin. After all, you’re not going to survive that winter on lettuce and kale. Yet, while shrines to meat are all over this mecca, the true Kaaba of Northern Wisconsin is Superior Meats. Located in the heart of Superior, Wisconsin, on Tower Street, the place is not in the most ideal location for someone like me looking to grill at Amnicon Falls, but like any meat pilgrimage, the journey to Superior Meats is well-worth it.

In the world of Michigan that I hail from, you grill hot dogs and hamburgers. In the Southwest, you might throw a little carne asada in the mix. And in Wisconsin, it’s all about the bratwurst. Superior Meats is the holy grail of brats. The flavors range from the simply named Beer, to the descriptive Wild Rice Cranberry Turkey, to the curious Sheboygan. But it doesn’t stop there. They also pack in crazy burgers with similar ingredients to the brats, amazing beef sticks, multiple varieties of jerky and cheese. Since we were a huge crew of guys with a couple girls sprinkled in, we loaded up on a feast of meats for grilling. Of all we ordered, here is what I remember:

Brats:

Breakfast

Beer

Three Cheese

Packer

Hunter

Philly Cheese Beef

Bacon and Blue Cheese

Burgers:

Philly Cheese

Bacon Cheddar

French Onion

Pepper Jack

The grand total, including all our fixin’s came to a measly 7 bucks per person. When we got to Amnicon Falls to grill, we opened up our spread of meat and witnessed something beautiful. But there was barely time to admire before the grill was fired up and we got to cooking. While the cooking job may not have been the greatest (due to lack of tongs), there was no question that these brats and burgers were some of the best the world had to offer, if not the best. My favorite was the bacon and blue. These tubes were oozing with flavors, snap and an unbeatable touch smoky goodness. After these, I don’t know if I can ever eat grocery store bratwurst again. And the burgers, too, were out of this world. Juicy, cheesy and unquestionably delicious, they managed to squeeze awesomeness into every ounce. A lot of places try to pull off the loaded burger patty, but Superior Meats has perfected it.

Now the only trouble is figuring out how to live my life without Superior Meats. Southern California is a far cry from Northern Wisconsin and I do my best to live a good unvegan life here, but now that I am back, I am concerned about what to do about grilling. Grocery store-bought burgers and bratwurst simply cannot compare to the glory of Superior Meats and perhaps it is better that way. Such a place would likely go unappreciated in the health-conscious enigma of LA, yet I can’t help but think that meats like those of Superior could convince a vegan to slaughter a pig on the spot.

So do yourself a favor…if you are ever within driving distance of Superior Meats, go. You and your stomach will thank me for it for the rest of your life.

Oh and if you know of a greater meat mecca than Northern Wisconsin, please let me know, because when I find myself eating up there it feels as though I’ve died and gone to meat heaven.