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…

As you drive through the Tunnel of Trees in Northern Michigan, you get the feeling that it could go on forever, that there could literally be no end to the trees. And most likely that was actually what Michigan was like a few hundred years ago. But, the tunnel ends eventually and the light at the end of that tunnel is the Legs Inn, which feels out of place in what can easily be referred to as the middle of nowhere.

You see, Legs Inn was put together by a guy who immigrated from Poland to Michigan back in the 1920s and was even adopted as an honorary Indian by the local tribe. The Inn has had ups and downs, including an unfortunate period as a biker bar (and not one of the cool ones), but is currently a beautiful sprawling complex with a hell of a view of Lake Michigan. Oh, and the food is all about those Polish origins.

I ordered up the Old World Sampler from the appetizer menu for myself, because it looked too damn good. It came with three pierogies, kabanosy (kielbasa’s skinnier cousin), bigos (hunter’s stew) and a couple of koytka (potato dumplings). For my pierogies I opted for two classic potato and cheese and one ground beef.

My dish arrived and almost looked perfect. I say almost because the bigos looked like more of a gatherer’s stew than a hunter’s, with much more sauerkraut than ground up meat and sausage. And while the meat was good, the stew left a lot to be desired. Thus, I was left spending most of my stomach space on the pierogies and kabanosy. The pierogies were nothing short of delicious, hitting all the right spots. I was glad I went with two potato and cheese as opposed to ground beef despite my blog’s name because it just tastes right. As for the sausage, I enjoyed it, but it was plain to see how kielbasa became the dominant Polish sausage in the zeitgeist. Oh, and the kotyka were essentially gnocchi and that meant they were delicious despite there only being a couple of them.

The Legs Inn is a special place, serving up some special food. While I appreciated being able to sample a few different dishes, on my inevitable return I’ll dive head first into pierogies and kielbasas, leaving the rest of the Polish world behind.

I often find it amazing how universal sausage is. It seems like every culture has its own version of tube meat, like all humans have some sort of collective conscience that led us to grind up meat and stuff it inside of an intestine. And while you might think that Taiwanese sausage would basically be the same as Chinese Sausage, you would be wrong.

Like all the rest of the street food I ate in Taipei, I had Taiwanese Sausage at the Shilin Night Market. I was shocked to find the sausage looked more like a kielbasa than a shriveled up log. It was cooked on a charcoal grill like I would have cooked up bratwurst back at home. It was juicy and not nearly as sweet as I would have guessed, and both were probably due to it not being dried out like Chinese Sausage is.

Like Chinese Sausage, it was all sliced up for you, but instead of being served as a part of a larger dish, the Taiwanese Sausage is meant to stand on its own. Well, almost. You see, in the bag of sliced up sausages was also slices of raw garlic. The idea is that you take a slice of each in each bite, which is insane because raw garlic is weirdly spicy and expectedly intense. And yet, somehow it all just works in a delicious way. A visit to Taiwan would be incomplete without some of this sausage.

Could there be a more inviting name for a sausage spot than Bike Jim’s Gourmet Dogs? You’d be hard-pressed to find one, but that only partly explains the rise of this brick and mortar that began as a simple (and yet gourmet) hot dog cart. I went to the location in downtown Denver and struggled to find the right sausage for me.

But alas, I found my sausage and it went by the name of Rattlesnake and Pheasant because it was made of both the former and the latter. The funny thing is that it’s probably more likely that a rattlesnake would eat a pheasant than I would eat either of them, but yet here I was. I got it topped with The Desert, which meant harissa roasted cactus, Malaysian curry jam, scallions, cilantro and onions two ways (I actually only opted into the crispy onions so it was onions one way for this guy). I also snagged the Fried Mac ‘n Cheese as a side.

One particularly awesome innovation at Biker Jim’s was that they had a bunch of shredded cheese available to grab along with their sauces, so you didn’t have to pay extra if you just wanted to get some cheese on your tube meat. With that said, but sausage had no need for cheese, as it was packed with a slight kick and delicious seasonings, as well as the delicious toppings.

The fried mac and cheese was also tasty, but truthfully unnecessary because I just didn’t realize how big the sausage would be. In the future, a side like that is really more for when you aren’t eating alone like Steven Glansberg.

Places like Biker Jim’s are few and far between, yet I haven’t been to one gourmet dog place that has disappointed. Fortunately, Biker Jim’s continued that trend and showed me that a rattlesnake and pheasant can coexist in a casing and in my stomach in a beautiful way.

What is Montrose? For the first 6+ years I lived in LA I probably would have answered that it is some sort of mythical creature composed of combining a mongoose with an albatross. The fact is that it is neither. Instead, it is a town up near Pasadena, built into the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains. And in that town is a restaurant called Zeke’s Smokehouse.

Zeke’s, as you might imagine, is a BBQ spot and usually if I don’t know what a BBQ place specializes in I have to go for a platter. Fortunately, the wife was game and we ordered up Zeke’s Combo for Two. This came with some white or dark chicken, Kansas City Spare Ribs, brisket and a hot creole link with three sides. We went with the mac and cheese, plus sweet potato fries and slaw for the lady because I would never make that mistake.

It turned out that Zeke knows how to cook up some pretty good BBQ. I was a big fan of the chicken, which was smokey and moist, and the ribs, which fell off the bone as they should have. The brisket left a bit to be desired, as the flavor was funky in a bad way and simply was not the moist and tender type of brisket I have come to know and love from other spots. The creole link was pretty solid, but I’m one of those people that doesn’t quite understand the point of random links with BBQ when I could just have more ribs instead. The mac and cheese was a little disappointing as well, but certainly nothing to complain about.

In all, Zeke’s did me pretty well. It’s not my favorite BBQ in the area, but variety is the spice of life and I fully expect to get back again soon to get busy with some ribs.

Torta is Mexican for sandwich and there is a sweet semi-new spot in Pasadena that deals pretty much exclusively in that hand food from south of the border. It’s called Tortugas, and is either a reference to turtles, an island in Haiti or a national park (the dry one). Regardless, the place has a great variety of Mexican sandwiches and one in particular screamed out to my unvegan belly.

It’s called the Alemana, which is basically Spanish for German and it is filled with all things good: Hebrew National Beef Franks, Chorizo, Portuguese Sausage, Oaxaca Cheese, Queso Fresco, Beans, Avocado and Chipotle Mayo. If that doesn’t sound fantastic to you, then you are on the wrong blog. Seriously, close this browser window. Now.

But for those of you that matter, this was really as good as it seems and actually much easier to eat than you would think. Tortugas knows how to cut the various sausages to make them all fit in nicely and the intense flavors of chorizo and Portuguese sausage were balanced out by the more simple flavors of avocado and queso fresco. Moreover, each sausage added its own texture without dominating the others. These are the best male enhancement sold in stores.

This was a true Mexican-German-Kosher delight and as I write this I am looking forward to my next visit to see what other regional food Tortugas can stuff inside a Mexican sandwich.

Bludso’s in Compton is very often hailed as the best BBQ in LA. Yet, for some reason, a number of people find it difficult to make it to that part of town. Thus, Bludso’s spun off into Hollywood with a bar and que concept that creatively includes a bar along with BBQ. In other words, my long-awaited trip to BBQ heaven (and possibly like real heaven) in Compton was put on hold to make the trip to Hollywood.

Bludso’s considers itself to be Texas-style, which means that the dry rub and smokiness is supposed to be much more important than the sauce. Our waiter made this very clear and we had absolutely no issue with it, while still asking for both the regular and hot BBQ sauce just in case.

We ordered a half rack of pork ribs, a half pound of brisket (not the lean Hollywood stuff), a Texas Red Hot and that side of collared greens was just for my buddy, don’t worry.

For starters, the brisket blew me away. It was so unbelievably juicy and smoky, with glistening fat that packed flavor rather than distracted from the meatiness. There was truly no need for the BBQ sauce with this brisket, which left me drooling for more.

The ribs were also great, but not nearly up to the level of the brisket. This is either a slight to the ribs or a glowing endorsement of the brisket, but either was I couldn’t complain. The meat did a mighty good job of falling off the bone and they were quite meaty. Again, these did not need sauce, but a little touch here and there really took these ribs to another delicious level.

The Texas Red Hot was, well, a Texas Red Hot. It wasn’t bad, it was just exactly what you would expect from a solid beefy Red Hot. I’d take more ribs or brisket over that any day.

Ultimately, the food at Bludso’s was a resounding success. I fear I have eaten the greatest brisket in the world and that I will be searching the world forevermore to find some better, but that is a worthy quest and a worthy result of a meal from Bludso’s. Now, to see if the original Compton location can do any better…

Some cities have restaurants that have been around since the beginning of forever. In Washington, D.C., that place is Ben’s Chili Bowl, which I believe has been serving up chili since the Lincoln presidency. No? Well Eisenhower is close enough. Our current POTUS has paid the place a visit at least once and according to a sign is one of only two people (aside from his family) that eats free. The other, obviously, is Bill Cosby.

My trip to Ben’s Chili Bowl started out ominously. After waiting in line for more than 30 minutes and marveling at the inefficiency (perhaps some spillover from congress?), I had to run to a show down the street before ordering. Upon my return, however, I snagged a spot at the counter and was (at least in Ben’s Chili Bowl time) quickly waited upon.

I ordered myself a Chili Half-Smoke, which is a quarter pound of pork/beef sausage topped with chili, onions and mustard. I also had some chili cheese fries because it would have been stupid not to.

The food could have come faster. Surely at any Coney Island in the Detroit area it would have, but when it did come it was a beauty. The Half-Smoke was spilling over with chili (and no onions because you know how I roll) and had a delicious kick to it. In fact, it was pretty similar to Detroit-style chili, without the onions, with what I believe was cumin and absolutely no beans to be found. The big difference was the half-smoke, which has some nice and crispy skin with a delicious snap. The bun held up well, but rightly only existed as an attempt to keep things clean.

The chili cheese fries were exactly what they should have been. Doused in a cheese sauce in addition to the chili, the fries held up pretty well. Plus, the cheese sauce seemed unique in some sense, as opposed to being some ordinary nacho-esque sauce.

Undoubtedly this was a tasty meal that lived up to the hype. The only problem was the wait. Hype is one thing to live up to, but lines are another thing entirely. If Ben’s Chili Bowl can get their shit together and pump out tasty chili at a greater speed, I would be eager to get back to it. As it stands now, I’ll probably only make my way back if the moment is right.

Here we have a long-awaited new guest blog from none other than @RGspiegel. Catch more of his writing here.

Disclosure I: David Marcus, one of the owners of Smoke Shack, is my second cousin.
Disclosure II: I’m starting a movement such that cousins are classified only as first or second cousins. How much better is that than trying to figure out your exact relationship to your dad’s first cousin’s son with somethingth-cousin-somethingths-removed? A lot.
Disclosure III: Smoke Shack was legitimately awesome.

Now that my and Unvegan’s journalistic integrity are squarely intact, I can begin the review of my glorious Saturday lunch at Smoke Shack, a BBQ restaurant that opened up about a month ago in Milwaukee’s third ward.

Due to my aforementioned relationship with one of the owners, I was an early “liker” of Smoke Shack on Facebook. As a connoisseur of hardcore food porn (when I really need to get in the mood I watch clips of Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives), I’ve been regularly excited to see that Smoke Shack has been putting up some exquisite-looking food for more than a month now and my anticipation was palpable.

We started off by ordering a bowl of chili (with beef brisket and jalapeños), candied bacon with sweet potato fries, and Kansas City rolls (pulled pork and Monterey jack cheese inside egg roll shells). “Will that be all for now?” the server asked. My dad made sure his friends didn’t want any other appetizers. For the time being they didn’t, to which I said, “Damn, I wanted you guys to say you wanted the wings.” (I had chosen everything else.) So they ordered the wings, too.

All of the appetizers were really good. The best of which being the Kansas City rolls, dipped in the ranch that I had asked for with the wings. Trying to come up with cogent words to adequately describe how good they were is turning my brain into Homer Simpson’s and I wish a 140-character made-up jibberish word connoting carnal satisfaction would suffice as professional and be understood by the masses. Just trust me on this one. The wings were really high-quality chicken but it would have been awesome if they could have been tossed in any (or all) of Smoke Shack’s four BBQ sauces–Carolina Gold, Kansas City, House, and Texas.

For the main course, we ordered a four-meat sampler plate, which consisted of house made Berkshire sausage, beef brisket, pulled pork, pulled chicken, and a side of baked mac and cheese. The sausage — spicy, succulent, crispy on the outside, and chewy on the inside — was simply amazing and a competitor with the pulled pork egg rolls for being Smoke Shack’s biggest differentiator. The mac and cheese probably needed a little bit more cheese but it’s not as if it was irresponsible.

The rest of the sampler platter was amazing and seemed to get better with every bite. After sampling each of the meats individually, I asked for a hard roll and made a dominantly dominant sandwich consisting pulled pork, pulled chicken, beef brisket, and the mac and cheese. I topped it with a mixed combination of all four BBQ sauces. This sandwich confirmed by former roommate’s rule of life that everything that tastes great tastes great together. That’s just science, I suppose.

For dessert, we split beignets (kind of like French donuts) and pecan pie with whiskey ice cream. Like a good neighbor, the waiter was there with a glass of milk. Both desserts were outstanding and as I ate them I imagined and tried to mimic the ear-to-ear, teeth-fillings-and-upper-gum exposed grin coupled with eyes WIDE open that my late grandfather would have had as he took his first bite of the warm, gooey pecan pie. When everyone was full to the brim and there was about a quarter of the pecan pie left, I had to finish it in his honor; there’s no way he would have let it go to waste. Someone had to be the humanitarian.

At this point, my impending food coma was in a square battle with my Diet Coke. (After four of them had been served in mason jars, I told the waiter to cut me off.) Diet Coke won the first round as I was able to walk back to my hotel but as soon as I got back to my room, it was clear that the food coma had just been biding its time.

It was the best kind of food coma, though, the kind where you have to find the precise right spot on which to lie on your side, re-positioning the food in your stomach so you’re not putting pressure on the points that are the fullest. I woke up about two hours later, still full, and ready to take on the rest of the day.

Last week, an unexpected parcel arrived. I immediately suspected anthrax and was ready to detonate it in the street when I noticed it was from my future brother-in-law. For some, this may be further reason to suspect anthrax, but Dustin has never me reason to believe he’d want me dead. I opened it up and found a pair of sausages with an awesome letter welcoming me to the family. Truth be told, had I known sausages were in the mix, I’d have popped the question long ago.

The letter also informed me the sausages came from a friend of a friend of his in New York who had recently started up a sausage company called Charlito’s Cocina. I was excited to try them and although it took me a few days to get to it, I was safe knowing the dry-cured sausages could handle it. But aside from being dry-cured, what kind of sausages were these? The answer is Trufa Seca, which means they were full of black truffle. Aside from that, these were pork through and through with sea salt as the final flavoring ingredient. According to the website, the pork was a heritage breed and pasture-raised, which made me feel even better as I sliced off my first bit.

The first thing I tasted was the intensity of the black truffles. I love me some truffles but I was surprised to find the flavor so rich and dominant. The sea salt and pork certainly provided an impact of flavor as well, but they were overwhelmed by the truffles. This quickly got me thinking that this sausage was not meant to be eaten alone. Sausages need companionship, too, I decided.

And I was right, as usual. Although we only had crumbled goat cheese and basic crackers to pair with the sausage, they were the perfect touch. Rather than thinking about how rich the truffles were in every bite, I was able to contemplate the balance of the pork-truffle-sea salt combination and the delightful thick-ground texture.

Despite the richness that rendered me unable to eat this sausage on its own, I was really impressed with its complexity and the obvious manual labor that had gone into creating these. Mine came from batch #3, and this was hand-written on the packaging as if to let me know the Trufa Seca had come right from the heart. So thanks, Dustin, for introducing me such quality meat and not anthraxing me. If you live in New York or nearby, seek out Charlito’s Cocina. Just make sure you if you get the Trufa Seca, you seek out a little something to eat it with!