NYS Fair food challenge: The weirdest things you can eat (if you dare!)

If you’re willing to look for it, you can find a unique culinary experience at The Great New York State fair that goes beyond deep fried Oreos and corn dogs. We set out on an adventure food expedition to find some of the weirdest and most exotic bites to eat at the fair

Here’s what we found.

Kangaroo Spiedies

Kangaroo Spiedies at Carr's Cove.Ben Axelson | baxelson@nyup.com

Kangaroo Spiedies

Name of item and vendor: Kangaroo Spiedies at Carr’s Kangaroo Cove

Location: Horticulture Building

Price: $10

Take a trip down under for these unassuming pieces of meat. They look like a bite of steak, but they’re actually tasty morsels of kangaroo meat with a spiedie sauce for a burst of flavor. They are very well-done and a bit chewy, and while you can get kangaroo elsewhere at the fair, this is the only spot to get it with the Upstate NY spiedie twist.

Rickey's Jerky

Rickey's Jerky stand in the Horticulture Building at the Great New York State Fair.Ben Axelson | baxelson@nyup.com

Camel Snackers and Wild Boar Jerky

Name of item and vendor: Camel Snackers and Wild Boar Jerky at Rickey’s Jerky

Location: Horticulture Building

Price: $20 for a bag of Camel Snackers, but prices range from $10-$25 for different varieties, and FREE samples abound.

While hunting for exotic game in the Horticulture building, we stumbled upon a jerky stand with a dazzling variety of dried meat snacks, from camel and alligator to salmon and bison. Camel was a novel meat for us, so we splurged on a $20 bag. The beef stick-style snack was delicious. Good flavor and enjoyable overall, but not easily distinguishable from an actual beef stick. Still, now you can say you’ve eaten camel. The wild boar jerky, on the other hand, hits your taste buds fast with a juicy flavor that stands out from other jerky. They also have a huge variety of other interesting flavors, including whiskey-infused jerky, and wild spicy flavors.

Shark kabob

Shark Kebab at Chester’s Gator and Taters, NYS Fair 2019.

Shark Kebab

Name of item and vendor: Shark Kebab at Chester’s Gator and Taters

Location: Midway

Price: $11

Dive into this unusual seafood offering which basically tastes like any other steaky fish, but is still a great seafood option for anyone at the fair looking to get away from the deep fried cuisine. The large flashy sign and alligator head will draw your eye to this Midway food stand.

Gator Mac & Cheese

Gator Mac & Cheese at Chester’s Gator and Taters, NYS Fair 2019.

Gator Mac & Cheese

Name of item and vendor: Gator Mac & Cheese at Chester’s Gator and Taters

Location: Midway

Price: $13

Chewy, cajun flavored alligator meat accompanies otherwise standard mac & cheese. If you’re sensitive to unusual textures, this might have you saying “later, alligator," but otherwise, you’re in for a hard-to-find treat at the Fair.

Ostrich Jerky

Ostrich Jerky from Stix & Things at the New York State Fair.Ben Axelson | baxelson@nyup.com

Ostrich Jerky

Name of item and vendor: Beef & Ostrich Jerky at Stix & Things

Location: Outside the Poultry Building

Price: $3.75

Pull your head out of the sand for this one. Ostrich jerky wasn’t available at our previous jerky stop, and we had to try a bite. Unfortunately, it was really indistinguishable from a standard strip of beef jerky. Maybe a tad saltier?

Pickle Pizza at Toss N’ Fire

Pickle Pizza at Toss N’ Fire, NYS Fair 2019

Pickle Pizza

Name of item and vendor: Pickle Pizza at Toss N’ Fire

Location: Restaurant Row

Price: $13

Look, pickle pizza isn’t exactly “exotic,” but it’s highly controversial, so we felt it was a worthy inclusion on our weird and adventurous list. As it turns out, the line here is pretty much whatever your line on pickles is. For Geoff, who isn’t a pickle fan, he literally couldn’t swallow this one. For Ben, who has no particular dislike for pickles, this was a great little personal, wood-fired pizza that just happened to have pickles on it.

CBD Edibles

CBD Edibles at Empire CBD, NYS Fair 2019

CBD Edibles

Name of item and vendor: CBD Edibles at Empire CBD

Location: Near restaurant row

Price: $6 for chocolate bar, $20-40 for gummies

For the uninitiated, CBD is Cannabidiol, the active ingredient in cannabis derived from hemp plants. It does not contain THC, so you don’t get the “high” from marijuana, so it can be used to help treat conditions like pain, insomnia, and anxiety. (So it’s not “weird," but it is certainly new at the New York State Fair after the 2018 Farm Bill essentially legalized CBD federally.) You can take CBD in a lot of forms, including edibles -- so we opted to try the CBD gummies and chocolate bars. The gummies tasted just like regular gummy bears, while the “melo out” chocolate was slightly below average. Both made us feel slightly more relaxed, and they offer different dosages if you want to try them as treatments. Ask, the staff (which has offices around Syracuse) is more than happy to explain the benefits, potential side effects and make recommendations.

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