Kathy Tran
Audio By Carbonatix
The State Fair of Texas is suddenly the cool kids’ table. Celebrities passing through Dallas have made appearances at or near the fair, snapping selfies with Big Tex and partaking in the iconic corny dogs.
Last week, local singer-songwriter Leon Bridges visited the fair wearing a burnt orange T-shirt before swapping it out for a shirt with the state of Texas and “Leon” custom-air-brushed in cursive. Perfect. He ate a Fletcher’s Corny Dog, posed with the bacon-on-a-stick guy and rode the Ferris Wheel.
Boston-native and big sports personality, El Presidente, as he’s known among his Barstool Sports fans, hit the fair after attending the Texas-OU game Saturday. He had a mission to complete a one-bite review of top fair foods. Portnoy likes to dabble in one-bite reviews. One of his social media channels is just for one-bite pizza reviews. The diehard Celtics fan came to Dallas last June when they played the Mavericks in the NBA playoffs, at which time he reviewed two local pizza spots: Louie’s and Pizza Leila.
One bite of pizza here and there is one thing. One bite of all the big-name foods at the fair is another. Believe us, we know. That’s a food tour that can slap back quickly, so we’re anxious to see how the rest of the tour has gone, but so far they’ve only posted his first stop at Fletcher’s, which like a lot of things with Portony, was not without controversy. (He’s like cilantro; people love or hate him. He loves OU. He rants.)
First, Pizza
The day prior to the Red River Rivalry (which he insisted on calling a “Red River Shootout” to not be “woke”) and food fair tour, Portnoy hit up Fortunate Son in Garland for the New Haven-style pizza. The sign on the door, “From Wooster to Main Street,” was promising, but things didn’t get off to a great start with an overly complicated online ordering process (download an app and pay online), and then when he arrived to get the pizza he says it was like no one was working.
He finally gets the pizza (oof) and opens the box and the says, “This is tomato, this isn’t New Haven” before asking someone, “Did you order the wrong kind?”
Portnoy relegates that pizza style to New Jersey, “Trenton maybe,” but not New Haven. He reorders and finally gets the style of pie he considers classic New Haven and says it “passes the muster.”
Portnoy then went to Thunderbird Pies, one of our Top 100 restaurants, to try the Detroit-style pizza. He says this style of pizza should look heavy but be light on its feet like an offensive lineman, which is actually a great metaphor.
He gets big kid vibes from the restaurant due to the video games and “memes” and says he doesn’t think “kid joint when I think Detriot style.” Sames.
Alas, his one-bite review scored 7.3, when the average for that style (for him) is 7.5. He offers that for Texas that’s a pretty good score.
The fireworks represent Big Tex’s mind as Portnoy eats a corn dog in front of him, shocked it has a hotdog in it.
Kathy Tran
The Big Corn Dog Surprise
So far, the only video Portnoy has posted of the State Fair of Texas of his one-bite tour is of the corny dog. And this was a big surprise to him: he had no idea that corny dogs have a wiener in the middle. He thought it was all corn breading. “I was the most shocked guy when a hotdog popped out of there,” he says.
He adds ketchup, then takes another bite and says, “This is a bizarro-world hotdog.”
He keeps calling it Stoney’s Corn Dogs (it’s Fletcher’s) and ranks his first – and probably only – bite of a corn dog at a 7.3 and says he prefers a normal hot dog.
OK.
Then the comment section has a party:
nikki.lurv: This was offensive to corn dogs.
skaterpunk444: Dudes ruining the kids photo op while being shocked a corn dog has a dog in it. 0 out of 10 …
bishO16: On my life, I refuse to believe you had no idea how a corn dog worked. Refuse.
visit_dallas: Who is this diva- Dave to the corndog
jeff.garbarek: Good lord.
thelovelyreborn: You’ve got to be kidding me if you didn’t know there was a hot dog in a corn dog.
epearson714: Big Tex is fighting for his life watching him eat it dry, and then with ketchup.
thedudebrah: … he’s saying hut dog.
nicudoc68: Ketchup on a hot dog is a rookie score.
fletcher_hexagon: Gimme my corn dog back you
The best comment might be this one:
partyboylance: I doubt that shack at the fair invented the corn dog.
Actually, Party Boy Lance, it’s not a shack, it’s an empire.
