Letters From the Editor: Deep-fried and bacon-wrapped? Must be fair time

I hope to drop weight this summer.

The Orange County Fair has other plans. I may as well wait until New Year’s to break my resolution.

The theme of the July 12 to Aug. 11 shindig is “Come & Get It.” The “It” to come and get is batter-slathered, deep-fried, bacon-wrapped and stick-stuck. This is, of course, why man discovered fire — and cardiologists.

Fair folks on Tuesday released their annual list of food coma-inducing menu items to the media.

Chicken Charlie again plans to serve dishes that warrant a scolding from Michelle Obama. Take the Krispy Kreme Sloppy Joe, a breakfast-lunch combo, which can be paired with a side of Deep-Fried, Bacon-Wrapped Pickles. Another option: Waffle Dogs, which, true to their name, are hot dogs wrapped in waffles and, just for good measure, served on a stick.

If that’s not enough fatback for you, the aptly named Bacon A-Fair is dropping Cheesy Bacon Bombs and washing them down with non-alcoholic Bacon Beer (really root beer, they say). Fancy-pants types may deign to dine on Truffle Gouda Bacon Fries while those who want to go Paleolithic can gnaw Wild Boar Bacon, again on a stick.

Over at Biggy’s Meat Market, they plan to debut a 2-foot, smoked Biggy Sausage and the Big Chic, which is 24-ounces of chicken breast meat. Yep, both on sticks.

You can also do sweet and sour: Ten Pound Buns offers the Bacon Nutella Bun — ground bacon, butter and Nutella — on a sourdough pizza.

There’s even health-conscious fair fare. Pink’s Hot Dogs will prepare a beef Ghirardelli Hot Dog topped with cream cheese, honey mustard, crumbled bacon (and this is the healthy part) dark chocolate, which they say is good for your blood pressure.

If you can eat all or any of this without coming home so drunk on grease that you demand that the Food Network put Paula Deen back on the air, the OC Fair offers enough artery-benders — macaroni and cheese hamburgers, deep-fried lobster and deep-fried strawberries — for a return visit.

For those of us who work in town and want to go back to the office without broken belt buckles, $2 Taste of Fair Food lunch deals will be offered from noon to 4 p.m. Fridays, when samples are, thankfully, smaller.

JOHN CANALIS is the editor for the Daily Pilot, Laguna Beach Coastline Pilot and Huntington Beach Independent. He can be reached at (714) 966-4607 and [email protected].