Advertisement

There’s a method to OC Fair’s fried-food madness

Share

Tony Boghosian and his brother Charlie have been serving fried chicken and waffles at the Orange County Fair for years, but for this season, the brothers and co-owners of Chicken Charlie’s wanted to try something different. They wanted to “fair-ify” the popular dish.

“People would order chicken and waffles and they’d be walking around trying to cut their waffle with a knife and fork, trying to eat the chicken, and you have to have a place to sit — but it’s not always easy to sit at the fair,,” Tony Boghosian said. “So we developed this.”

Chicken in a Waffle on a Stick is one of Chicken Charlie’s newest creations. Fried chicken tenders are cooked directly into a round waffle and put on two wooden sticks with a side of maple syrup. It’s a portable version of the classic dish — no utensils needed.

Advertisement

“It’s like a big ol’ fat lollypop,” Boghosian said.

The OC Fair began in 1889 as a way to show off the county’s livestock and fresh produce. It gradually incorporated fried treats such as funnel cakes and corn dogs.

The past decade, however, has witnessed a revolution in OC Fair food — what Robin Wachner, director of communications for the fair, called an “explosion” of over-the-top offerings.

“When foods like bacon are trending, the fair jumps on it,” Wachner said. “So now it’s become an expectation. It used to be ‘What’s the theme?’ But now it’s ‘What’s the new food?’”

“The things that seem traditional today, like cotton candy and corn dogs, at one time were considered crazy and revolutionary,” she added. “Fair food has always been on the edge.”

New items this year include:

  • Pepsi Donut Bacon Dog: quarter-pound bacon-wrapped beef hot dog on a doughnut bun topped with Pepsi glaze

  • Bacon Nutella Pickle: dill pickle wrapped in bacon and filled with the popular hazelnut cocoa spread

  • French Toast Bacon Bombs: sweet dough stuffed with cream cheese, wrapped in bacon, deep fried, sprinkled with sugar and topped with maple syrup

  • S’moreo Donut: 10-inch glazed doughnut topped with chocolate, Oreo cookie crumbles, graham crackers and marshmallow cream

Driving these outrageous foods, said Bobby Navarro, who works for the OC Fair’s communications department, is increased media and social media attention to the wacky offerings.

“It’s almost like a battle of the best — which item is going to be the newest, biggest, most fried, most caloric,” he said.

Mike Peterson, owner of Bacon A Fair, agreed.

“You’re always trying to up the ante and compete with the other vendors,” he said. “It’s fun, but you’re always trying to one-up them. That’s always the goal.”

This year, Peterson’s new dishes include the Pepsi Donut Bacon Dogs, French Toast Bacon Bombs and Bacon-Wrapped Baked Potatoes, which are served alongside mainstays such as Gouda cheese-stuffed bacon-wrapped mushrooms and turkey legs covered in a pound of bacon.

After working the summer fair circuit, Peterson, who started his bacon-themed stand in 2012, spends the rest of the year experimenting and trying to find new recipes for the next season.

“I get in the kitchen and start frying different things together and see what people are doing on the Internet,” he said. “I won’t do their same idea, but I can take their concept. I saw a boiled-down Pepsi syrup on a burger. We didn’t want to do that on a burger, but we could do that on a dog.”

Peterson, a vendor since 1989, said that while he’s never had a menu item too bizarre for Orange County fairgoers, plenty of his ideas never made it out of the test kitchen — like a bacon pizza burger.

And while he enjoys the competitive nature of fair food, it’s still about quality, he said.

“I refuse to put out something that’s just a gimmick, that isn’t going to taste good,” he said. “I don’t want people to take a bite, take a picture of it, then throw it away. I only make things that they’re going to eat the whole thing. And if I wouldn’t eat the whole thing, I don’t want to sell it.”

Boghosian said Chicken Charlie’s, which started more than 20 years ago serving basic dishes such as fried chicken, chicken strips and potato wedges, has in recent years added over-the-top items such as the Krispy Kreme triple-decker cheeseburger — three cheeseburger patties between two glazed Krispy Kreme doughnuts — and deep-fried cookie dough.

The stand’s signature dessert, however, is the fried Oreo, which Boghosian called a product of “goofing around.”

Charlie Boghosian had been looking to add a dessert to the menu and spent a week “frying everything he could find,” including the entire junk-food aisle of a 7-Eleven. After none of those things worked out, Charlie saw a package of Oreos in Tony’s pantry and threw them in the deep fryer.

“They came out so incredible,” Tony said. “We would have never known at that time that we were going to sell millions and millions of those cookies over the years.”

Fried Oreos have been adopted by vendors at fairs across the country and in places such as Las Vegas and Downtown Disney.

The Boghosian brothers host “fried parties” twice a year, when they invite up to 50 friends, family members and neighbors to bring any food they’d like to have deep fried. The parties help the brothers brainstorm for future menu items.

Fried marshmallows are one example. The brothers wanted to deep fry a marshmallow, but no matter what they tried — breading, freezing — it always fell apart once it hit the oil.

“But then we came up with fried s’mores,” Tony said. “We figured out that covering marshmallows with chocolate and graham cracker was enough protection, and we sold it for many years.”

Not everything’s fried at the fair

While the past decade has seen many OC Fair vendors opting for more and more outrageous foods, others have tried to go in a healthier direction.

Terri’s Berries, for instance, sells fresh fruit cups, bowls and smoothies that come with a combination of cucumbers, watermelons, mangoes, strawberries, blueberries, blackberries, cherries and grapes, all from California farms. (There are no fresh oranges at the Orange County Fair.)

“I think it just works because it’s something different,” said owner Terri Crutchfield, whose father was a raspberry and strawberry grower. “Some people come to the fair and eat whatever because they’re here only once a year. But others want to have something more than just the heavy stuff.”

Though Terri’s Berries is perhaps the healthiest vendor on the fairgrounds, it does have options for those with a sweet tooth, such as caramel apples and chocolate-covered strawberries.

Other vendors also are trying to incorporate not-so-artery-clogging items on their menus. One of Chicken Charlie’s most popular dishes is a grilled chicken kabob, which Tony Boghosian said has fewer than 400 calories.

Fresh Mexican Seafood features fish and shrimp ceviche, and Juicys offers organic, nitrate-free hot dogs and sausages.

The OC Fair welcomes the healthier choices, said Navarro of the communications department, because they encourage people to stay longer. Too much fried food, he said, may cause people to get tired and go home.

‘They want something fun’

Though Chicken Charlie’s has several nonfried options, Tony Boghosian said the whole point of attending the OC Fair is to try the crazy foods that aren’t found any other time of year.

“People come out to the fair, and, as health-conscious as they are, they want something fried, they want something fun,” he said. “They ask us, ‘What are you going to fry?’ not ‘What are you going to grill?’ Because it’s the fair, because it’s once a year, people relax their diets a bit.

“If you have one order of fried cookie dough, it’s not going to hurt you that much.”

Advertisement