Central Florida Fair Food

I visited the Central Florida Fair and had some carnival food. I avoided deep fried Oreos, deep fried Twinkies, deep fried bacon, or anything else deep fried and got food from a booth selling steak. The food was being cooked in big skillets and smelled much better than much of the other fair food.

I tried a sandwich called the Big John. This featured a roll filled with mashed potatoes, mushrooms, onions, peppers, and sirloin tips. The steak was nice and moist with good flavor. Mashed potatoes on sandwiches always seems strange at first glance to me, but it worked here. Overall, this was a much better choice than a corn dog...

Central Florida Fair 2012 in Orlando, FL

I returned to the Central Florida Fair this year for some carnival food. It is like getting food from Orlando's gourmet food trucks, only you actually need to worry about whether or not the food is actually up to health code! Seeing a carnie in a food stand with the ashes from the cigarette in his mouth falling onto a pizza is never a good thing. Needless to say, I avoided food from trucks like this...

The gyro stand looked good and I didn't get a vibe that I could potentially get sick from eating their food, so it was a winner!

The pita was filled with sliced lamb, lettuce, tomato, onion, and tazitiki. Greek food from food stands in fairs is always good for some reason. I'd take this over fried oreos or fried pizza any day.

Besides the gyro, ribbon fries were shared. Three large potatoes were run through a drill-powered slicing machine resulting in very long strips of potato. They were then deep fried into a crunchy mass of fresh potato chips.

 

Some horribly overpriced grilled corn was also consumed. At $3 each, the corn was definitely not worth the money, but then again, it was tasty.

 

After the fair, the food all seemed to agree with me so I must have made wise food choices!

Santa's Enchanted Forest in Miami, FL

On my last trip down to South Florida, the tentative plan was to going to involve seeing Cirque du Soleil's Kooza. It turned out they had sold out several days in advance when I went to buy our tickets, so I decided to look for some sort of alternate form of entertainment. This ended up being a trip to Santa's Enchanted Forest in Southwest Miami...

Santa's Enchanted Forest turned out to be a huge fair with lots of Christmas themed dioramas. Being that it was a fair, they had all the appropriate deep fried carnival food...

There were also lots of other vendors selling pretty interesting foods. Lots of Latin-American foods and many of these vendors seemed local rather than touring with the carnival. Here's a stand selling steak kabobs cooked on a spinning rack over an open flame.

It was a cold evening, so I got myself a nice warm cup of hot cocoa...

It turned out I got my circus fix too. I suppose it was totally different from the circus experience I would have gotten from Cirque du Soleil, but I'm not complaining...

Orlando Food and Wine Festival

On November 13, I visited the Third Annual Orlando Food & Wine Fest. It happened on a section of Robinson Street next to Lake Eola Park. The festival featured food samplings from a multitude of Orlando's restaurants, cooking demonstrations, and live music.

While I was there The Redcoats were playing Beatles covers.

I watched a cooking demonstration with John Zimmerman of Ruth Chris Steakhouse.

Moving on to the food for sale, Kobe was cooking up their hibachi chicken.

Sushi was also well represented at the festival with Shari Sushi, CRAVE, and this Spicy Tuna Hand Roll from Orlando Sushi House.

There were several restaurants serving ribs. O'Charlie's had big slabs of ribs and The Boheme at the Grand Bohemian Hotel was offering Beef Ribs with Mango BBQ.


Dexter's was serving up pulled pork sandwiches.

Cityfish had huge Jalapeno Hush Puppies and some delicious looking Gumbo.

Champion's Gate was grilling kabobs that smelled great!

The larger restaurant chains were also at the festival. Panera Bread was serving soups and P.F. Chang's had rice and lettuce wraps.


Anatolia Mediterranean Cuisine was one of the booths that I choose to try. I had a gyro, served with tzatziki, hummus, and pita. The lamb in the gyro was very tasty!


I also tasted the food from Caribbean Sunshine Bakery. I tried the Jerk Chicken with a side of rice. The chicken was nice and tender and had a great kick to it. Out of all the food at the festival, it seemed like Caribbean Sunshine Bakery was giving some of the most generous portions.


I had a good time at the Food & Wine Fest! I was able to eat delicious foods, but my only wish was that I could have tried a bit of everything! There was so much to choose from at the festival, there was no way to sample it all! I suppose it's a good excuse to go visit the restaurants represented at the festival and try what I missed...

Space Coast State Fair

During the first weekend in November, I found myself at the Space Coast State Fair in Cocoa. If you're reading about a fair here, it means I consumed some fair food while I was there!

I had some freshly cut french fries. There was a scary amount of oil dripping off these...

For something a bit less greasy, I also had an ear of hot roasted corn! I love how they grill these still in the husk.

I also came across a taco truck in a camper called Authenticos Tacos Mexicanos. These fairs generally don't have taco trucks serving stuff like tongue tacos...

Vegfest in Orlando, FL

I'm not a vegetarian, but that didn't stop me from ending up at the Central Florida Vegfest in Lock Haven Park to check out the food choices! Most of the local vegetarian/vegan restaurants had booths set up, along with a few more that were new to me. Places to try I suppose...






Was I inspired to eat a vegan diet after my trip to the Vegfest? Later on, I ended up eating dinner at Keller's BBQ if that answers your question...

Palatka Blue Crab Festival 2010

I visited the 2010 Blue Crab Festival in Palatka, FL that happened over Memorial Day weekend. I had the full intention of eating crab prior to going, and it sounded even better when the price of blue crabs at one stand was lowered to $1.

When I went to buy the crabs, I found out they were putting the cooked crabs into plastic bags and handing them over. None of the normal crab eating equipment was supplied at the festival. There were no mallets, crackers, or little forks. If I wanted to eat the crabs as a late lunch/early dinner as I had planned, it would have required the removal of crab meat from the shells with my bare hands. This seemed like far too much work to make it worthwhile, so I gave up on my idea of having crab for dinner.

It was decided that rather than buying the evening's seafood from the festival, we would go to a nearby restaurant instead. Before leaving the festival though, I did buy a tray of these fresh cut potato chips, topped with sriracha. There were no hard shells that needed to be removed on these potatoes, thus making an ideal festival food.

I liked the Blue Crab Festival. It was in a great location along the St. Johns River in historic downtown Palatka. They had plenty of tents set up with people selling their wares and even a small carnival midway, but the food part just confused me. It was a blue crab festival, but yet only a single vendor was selling blue crabs, and they didn't supply the tools normally associated with eating the namesake seafood. Seems a bit strange that you can't physically eat blue crabs on the premises of a blue crab festival...

Zellwood Sweet Corn Festival 2010

I visited the 2010 Zellwood Sweet Corn Festival on a rainy afternoon for all you can eat corn. Needless to say, I had far too much of the butter soaked vegetable while I was there.


I also bought a cup of fresh squeezed lemonade to wash down all the corn...

The Corn Festival was a fun event, but the $15 admission was a little steep in my opinion. Besides the corn, everything else inside the festival had an additional cost. Since multiple ears of corn can be bought in a supermarket for under a dollar, a whole lot of corn had to be eaten to make it worth the money. I guess that $15 allows the bragging rights that I got to eat corn at the Zellwood Corn Festival...

Osceola County Fair Food 2010

I visited the Osceola County Fair in Kissimmee, FL. They had all the good stuff that a fair should have such as a huge selection of farm animals, circus acts, and plenty of rather scary rides. But this blog is not about any of that stuff, it's all about the food. While I didn't see any of the famous fair foods like doughnut burgers or deep fried butter, the Osceola County Fair still had a pretty good selection of food served from trailers. The following are random photos of some of the various food vendors at the fair:





I tried the Ribbon Fries from this cart. Fresh potato chips like this are normally pretty tasty, but the potatoes near the bottom of this plate were somewhat soggy.


I also got some roasted corn from this stand (Little Richard's?). How can you go wrong with an ear of corn roasted on a grill, dipped in butter, and then served by grumpy carnies?