It’s that time of year again, folks—when the Indiana State Fair rolls around like a deep-fried juggernaut of sodium, sugar, and unapologetic Midwestern whimsy. If you thought last year’s fair food selection was aggressive, you sweet summer child, you are not prepared for pickle-fried Oreos, cotton candy ale, or a bacon honeybun burger that comes with a side of “have you checked your blood pressure lately?”
Let’s dive headfirst into the mayonnaise-drenched fever dream that is the 2025 Taste of the Fair. Because nothing says “summer tradition” like sweating through 96-degree humidity while eating an entire day's worth of calories on a stick.
🥒 Pickle-Fried Oreos: Culinary Cry for Help or Genius?
Some madman at Pickle Barrel looked at a golden Oreo and said, “You know what this needs? A pickle slice on top.” Then, in what I can only assume was a ranch-fueled fugue state, they deep fried the whole situation and seasoned it like it owed them money.
Who hurt you, Indiana?
Imagine explaining this to someone in France. “Yes, it’s a dessert. No, that’s not a typo. Yes, there’s ranch dressing involved.”
This is what happens when the deep fryer unionizes with the sodium lobby. America, you’re beautiful, but you need therapy.
🍬 Cotton Candy Ale: What in the Willy Wonka IPA Is This?
From the hop-happy minds at Sun King Brewing comes State Fair Cotton Candy Ale, which tastes like a clown’s tears filtered through a beer bong. It’s 4% ABV, 10 IBU, and 100% “I regret this immediately.”
This isn't so much a drink as it is an existential crisis in a plastic cup. It’s for the brave souls who looked at cotton candy and thought, “Needs fermentation.” If you’ve ever wondered what it would feel like to shotgun a unicorn’s bathwater, now’s your chance.
🧀 BBQ Machos: Mac and Cheese, Meet Midlife Crisis
Over at Nitro Hog BBQ (because of course that’s the name), someone threw pulled pork and mac & cheese onto tortilla chips and called them BBQ Machos—which is Spanish for “I gave up caring what my cardiologist thinks.”
You want cheese? It’s there. You want pork? Sure. You want to feel like you’re being slowly hugged to death by cholesterol? Buddy, grab a fork.
It’s like someone accidentally spilled three entrees into one trough and decided, “Hey, let’s serve this to the public and see if anyone has the courage to finish it without crying.”
🥓 Bacon Honeybun Burger: Breakfast, Meet Bacon, Meet Type 2 Diabetes
This is not a drill. This is a burger nestled between two grilled honeybuns. Not buns with honey. Not honey-glazed. Full. Freaking. Honeybuns.
Honestly, this sandwich should come with a coupon for insulin. Your pancreas is going to file for unemployment halfway through.
It’s the kind of burger you eat because you lost a bet—or because you’ve simply accepted that summer 2025 is the season you lean fully into food-based nihilism.
🧂The Jerk Cheesy Fries: Caribbean Rage on a Potato Canvas
Let’s talk about Jamaican Breeze’s Jerk Cheesy Fries, a chaotic mix of crispy fries, gooey cheese, and jerk sauce that’s either “mild” or “spicy” depending on how much you want your mouth to scream.
Honestly, they’re probably delicious, but they also look like a toddler’s art project gone rogue. You don’t eat these so much as you wrestle them into submission with a fork. Just make sure you’re near a restroom within 15 minutes.
🍕 Pickle Bacon Ranch Pizza: The Unholy Trinity
Let’s get this out of the way: Pickle ranch is not a personality. And yet, here we are, topping pizza with it, then adding more pickles and bacon, then drizzling even more pickle ranch on top like it’s sacrament.
This is not innovation. This is culinary gaslighting. Pickles are having their moment and we must be stopped.
Also: who exactly decided pickles go on everything this year? What kind of briny pickle cabal is running the Indiana fairground kitchens?
☕ Cookie Butter Cold Brew Float: Diabetes, But Make It Trendy
At Hooks Drugstore Museum, which I assume is a place where time and dignity go to die, they’re offering a cookie butter cold brew float.
That’s cold brew + vanilla ice cream + whipped cream + cookie crumbles + cookie butter drizzle + a cherry. Because, you know, restraint.
At this point, your taste buds have surrendered. They're just riding shotgun while your brain chants, "YOLO" and your arteries start writing their will.
🍖 The Piggyback Stack: “Please, Just End Me”
A pork burger stacked with a beef patty, American cheese, lettuce, tomato, crispy onions, and “signature sauce,” served between two buns that audibly sigh when they see you coming.
Why stop there? Add a third patty. Add ham. Add your regrets. This burger is less a meal and more a dare.
🧇 Brunch Mary: Bloody Mary Meets Pinterest’s Worst Ideas
This isn’t a Bloody Mary—it’s a crime scene.
Urick Concessions has concocted a glass that features:
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A sausage sandwich
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A fruit kebab
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Bacon
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Donut holes
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A waffle stick
There’s vodka in there somewhere, probably. But mostly this is just an excuse to jam an entire Denny’s Grand Slam into a tumbler and call it brunch.
This isn’t “elevated cuisine.” This is Jenga with calories.
🍔 Yes ‘Cers Burger: Bison Meets Texas Toast in the Most
Red Frazier Bison’s latest creation is a thick bison burger on Texas toast with pimento cheese, horseradish pickles, and crunchy potato sticks—because apparently the kitchen ran out of ideas and just started emptying the pantry into one item.
Is it delicious? Probably. Will it haunt your dreams and digestive tract for days? Almost definitely.
🍩 Cinnamon Toast Cookie Butter Pretzel Bites: Just Say When
The award for “We Gave Up Trying to Be Subtle” goes to this monstrosity from Wilson Concessions. You get cinnamon-sugar pretzel bites. Then, they’re smothered in cookie butter. Then, cream cheese icing. Then Cinnamon Toast Crunch.
This is what happens when the dessert bar has no adult supervision.
🐟 Lobster Mac & Cheese: For When You Want to Feel Fancy at a Livestock Show
Let’s be real: you’re eating mac and cheese at a fair in Indiana. The lobster is not from Maine. It’s probably from the back of a Sysco truck named Larry.
But hey—garlic butter, creamy cheese, and lobster-flavored protein bits? Sure. Just don't expect your taste buds to be fooled into thinking this is a white tablecloth situation.
🌽 Street Corn Steak Tacos: Your One Moment of Sanity
Ah, steak tacos with street corn, cotija cheese, onions, cilantro—actual food! Something you might actually eat outside of a venue where someone is simultaneously deep-frying a stick of butter.
Don’t worry though. Urick Concessions will probably figure out a way to add donut glaze and ranch to these by next year.
🧃 Slime Licker Boba Blast: Every Parent’s Worst Nightmare
A collab between Georgia’s Kitchen and Toxic Waste Candy Company—which is not satire, by the way—this lemonade features sour boba, sour syrup, and the tears of dental hygienists everywhere.
It comes in Green Apple, Blue Razz, and Strawberry Lemonade flavors—all of which taste like the color neon aggression.
🍗 Deep Fried Pork Chop Sandwich: For People Who Like Their Meat With a Side of... More Meat
What happens when you deep fry a BBQ pork chop and slap it between bread? You get something that looks like a pork schnitzel mugged a hamburger and won.
It’s greasy. It’s huge. And it’s what every bodybuilder dreams about the night before cheat day.
🧈 Butterfinger Funnel Cake: So Sweet Your Teeth Will File for Divorce
North American Midway Entertainment decided to take funnel cake and smother it in vanilla cream and Butterfinger bits. Because sometimes, you just want to black out from sugar before noon.
Final Thoughts: America, You Beautiful, Unhinged Deep-Fried Goddess
The Indiana State Fair continues its proud tradition of ignoring every nutrition guideline ever printed. There are zero vegetables involved unless you count pickles—which, given their overuse this year, are basically the kale of 2025.
Fairgoers, remember: you’re not just eating. You’re voting. With your arteries. The top three food vendors will be rewarded with cash prizes, while the rest of us will be rewarded with urgent care bills.
So go ahead, scan that QR code while your face is buried in a Key Lime Pie Milkshake. Cast your vote while sipping a Cotton Candy Margarita through a straw jammed into a spun sugar cloud.
Because in Indiana, we don’t just celebrate the fair—we survive it.
See you at the Brunch Mary stand. I’ll be the one crying into a sausage kebab.