The best place to host the Big Tex Choice Awards, a celebration of the best new (usually fried) foods at the fair, is apparently as close to the livestock as you can get. Take a deep breath as you pass by the building labeled “POULTRY”; honor the completely-squirted-out parking lot ketchup packet; acknowledge the effort the Texas sun put into speed-killing the front lawn of the Briscoe Carpenter Livestock Center arena, square edges of the brand-new, never-had-a-chance sod still clearly visible.
Someone in a Little Big Tex costume stomps out a cig and walks through the double doors of the building. It’s go time.
You could kick the tension in the shins with a giant, Big Tex Lucchese Boot. There’s a lot on the line here for the ten Big Tex Choice Awards Competition finalists. (You can read about them here.) Winning the title of Most Creative, Best Savory, or Best Sweet directly translates to a long line in front of your concession stand and the potential of a six-figure bonus in your pocket. Losing means you put a whole lot of marketing and effort into a brand-new item for your stand that might not bring home the bacon (cotton candy).
The original idea of this competition was to bring some attention to fair food and to encourage new ideas among the concessionaires to keep things fresh. It’s safe to say that 20 years later, the only reason we live in a world alongside Hot Chick-in-Pancake Poppers is thanks to Big Tex and his little awards show. And sure, the concessionaires are keeping things fresh— fresh fryer oil counts, right?
A panel of judges “from a variety of culinary fields” will determine whose fried fantasies will reign supreme.
Karbach Brewing Co., the headlining sponsor of the Big Tex Choice Awards, has Brad Batson on the panel, offering tasting notes complete with beer-pairing suggestions. He has high hopes that you’ll pair a fried food item with a Karbach beer. We know you’ll definitely pair it with an additional too many domestic beers from the automobile building. Nothing says State Fair szn like a dad testing the sound system in a 2025 minivan by earnestly scream-singing Matchbox 20 after some Hippie Chips and 32 ounces of warm Bud Light.
Lean in and whisper, “Leslie Brenner’s here,” to any restauranteur in Dallas, and you’ll immediately know what kind of review she gave them during her tenure as the dining editor at The Dallas Morning News by how much expo trauma flashes behind their eyes. (That’s a mean prank, actually. Don’t do it unless you’re ready for a solid ass-kicking.) She’s opinionated, she’s way overqualified for this panel, and she has the best chance of being truthful about your options for new fair food this year. She seemed very pleased with the Drowning Taquitos and the Bacon Cotton Candy on a Stick (“How big was the pig this bacon came from??”).
Calvin Golden, honored by Wingstop with their Lifetime Achievement Award and now serving on the board of Wingstop Charities, seems like he likely knows a thing or two about fried food. Nobody mentions his perfectly deep, Morpheus-from-The-Matrix radio voice the entire time he is commenting on these fair food items, but The Ticket should add him to their roster ASAP. Everything he said carried weight, just by the way he said it. “I approached it with caution,” he said, referring to the Texas Sugar Rush Pickles. Regarding the Bacon Cotton Candy on a Stick, he said, “The presentation when you look at it is— well, you’re kind of at a loss for words,” and then, “I truly believe it will be extremely popular.” Morpheus has spoken. And so, it is.
Nikky Phinyawatana, the chef behind the Asian Mint restaurant group, joins the panel this year. Got a State Fair of Texas hangover after eating all these fried foods and walking around on the melting blacktop concrete roads of the fair this season? She says to come into her restaurant and order a “beautiful, cleansing mocktail” with ginger to cure what ails you. During her judging on the panel, she was the only one to figure out that if you pick up the Dominican Fritura Dog and fold it together like a hot dog (rather than cutting into it with a fork and knife), it’s immediately transformed into a portable corndog again. You could hear the lightbulb turn on in the auditorium when she said, “I saw you use a fork and a knife. But, look—You just do this.” [smashes corndog together and takes a bite]. So many lives changed.
Donovan Lewis—who we all know from 1310 The Ticket—has judged this competition for a thousand years. I know the competition has only been around for 20 years, and he’s not 1,000 years old, but I swear to you he’s been judging it here and in all the parallel universes on different timelines since forever. As far as I’m concerned, he’s the only judge we need. He said the Texas Sugar Rush Pickles had so much going on; they were like “an over-talkative 6-year-old.” He told me he was afraid of those pickles before he even tried them. But, he was pleasantly surprised. When I asked what he thought they would do to his body later tonight, he just laughed and said, “Only time will tell!” Thank you for your service, sir.
The best part of the whole competition is watching these concessionaires win. There are so many happy tears, so many cheers from the crowd and from their fellow concessionaires. Justin Martinez won Best Savory with his Dominican Fritura Dog and was visibly choking up about how much this meant to him and to his family. When Texas Sugar Rush Pickles was announced as the winner of the Most Creative title, a man in a cowboy hat bolted up in the row in front of me and hollered, “That’s my wife, y’all!” And then you see Isaac Ruosso standing next to a human- sized bacon cotton candy on a stick that’s wearing its own gold chain and inviting people to take selfies.
Texas, you’ve outdone yourself this year. Congratulations to all the finalists and winners of the Big Tex Choice Awards. If you have a chance to try any of these items this year, you’re going to be weirded out and delighted— just like that feeling you get every year when you see Big Tex up close, in person. Thank Fried God that the State Fair of Texas season is upon us once again.
The 2024 State Fair of Texas opens Friday, September 27, and runs through Sunday, October 20. You can purchase season passes and premium tickets online at BigTex.com/Tickets.
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