TUCSON, Ariz. — This weekend is the last chance for Southern Arizonans to check out the Pima County Fair before the hundreds of employees pack up the 600-acre fair and head to the next town.
For those who prefer to keep their feet off the rides and on the ground, there’s one man to thank for keeping fair-goers fueled up and full for the day.
Hidden between the thrill rides and carnival challenges are over 40 booths serving the couple hundred-thousand Arizonans who pass through the county fair gates.
When it comes to fair food of all types, there’s only one man worth talking to: The Midway Gourmet Dominic Palmieri.
“I’ve been in the industry 38 years,” he said, “and I’m only 39 years old.”
Palmieri has been serving fair food since he could stir a pot. As a toddler, he says he stood on a milk crate, stirring a pot of spaghetti in his uncle’s fair restaurant.
“I caught the bug,” Palmieri said.
Though now, the industry looks different. The Pima County Fair doesn’t serve spaghetti for one thing, though their menu is constantly changing.
“Every year, our guests not just ask for but demands ‘what is going to be the new fair food creation,’” Palmieri said.
He and his team spend the time they’re not in their booths searching for new foods they can sell at fairs across the country. It isn’t as simple as the recipe; each food item has to be transported, stored and prepared in vastly different locations.
“Food chains are still disrupted, transportation is kind of crazy right now, so there’s a lot of things to consider,” he said. “How much do we bring in? Where do we store it? Is it stored off grounds? Is it stored on grounds?”
Palmieri says they’re also focusing on bringing in the latest social media food crazes and trends. This year, the county fair is debuting a Dubai chocolate strawberry cup: fresh strawberries, covered in smooth Belgian chocolate and creamy pistachio cream, then topped with shredded kataifi pastry.
He says inspiration for new products comes from everywhere, including family vacations.
“When our son Enzo was in his semester abroad last year in the fall, he started in Amsterdam,” Palmieri said. “As we were walking around the city, there were all these little, tiny French fry stands.”
Those stands preferred the European trend of mayonnaise on fries instead of ketchup, so Palmieri brought it back to his traveling fairs, serving “Dutch Fries.”
He describes the Dutch fries and a crispy French fry, covered in butter, Parmesan cheese and parsley, then topped with a heavy drizzle of black truffle mayonnaise.
While some foods are found, others are created on the fairgrounds.
“Some of the experimented crazy things that we come across by luck, sometimes are super popular,” Palmieri said.
That’s the case with the fair’s hot Cheeto cheddar cheese pickle products: pizza, fries or chips.
The combination began as an accident, when a hot Cheeto-stuffed dill pickle was out of stock, and an employee decided to use sliced pickle chips instead. It stuck as a full-time menu item.
“I think because I love what I do, it makes me want to innovate,” Palmieri said. “I’m not looking for a one-hit wonder.”
Thanks to the work of the Midway Gourmet, those new experiments and all the classic fair foods will be up and running all weekend long, and for many weekends to come.
“It’s a hard life,” he said. “We work 17-18 hours a day, seven days a week, ten and a half months out of the year. I think I’ll continue to do it until they tell me I can’t do it anymore.”
