LIMA — Its Allen County Fair time.
That means many things to different people. However, there is one interest that all fairgoers have in common. If you are on a diet, it is thrown out the window for a short period of time.
For a little more than a week, we are transported from our humdrum lives of fast-food or cooking dinner at home and into the world of all kinds of delicacies. Blooming onions, elephant ears, funnel cakes, deep fried anything, from pickles to Twinkies, and giant sandwiches consisting of a pound or more.
Normally, it would cost way too much money to try everything. However, if you were at the Allen County Fair on Tuesday, you had a chance to try most of it without breaking the bank. It was “Taste of the Fair Day” from noon to 8 p.m. Where food vendors offered 25 different item samplers for $2.
“This was something new we added last year,” said fair Concessions Manager Dar Hollar. “It is something we hope to keep going.”
Vendors were given the opportunity in the spring when the fair office began circulating information about the upcoming fair. Vendors just simply needed to respond that they wanted to participate and select an item. Fair patrons had the chance to try anything from little cotton candy sticks and doughnut burger sliders to sugar waffles and deep fried pecan pie bites.
J & M Homemade Ice Cream out of Elida offered its fair-famous ice cream in two scoops during the special and Bill Prowant with Prowant Specialties offered many different items. Bayou Billy’s out of Michigan offered a Cajun Platter sampler. Bayou Billy’s has been on the fair circuit for many years and is in its second year at the Allen County Fair. Bayou Billy’s is most famous for its chicken with a special seasoned blackening seasoning. He anticipated that they would sell more than 1,000 pounds of chicken during the nine days of the fair.
“For the amount of food that is here, we are holding our own,” said Paul Dobes with Bayou Billy’s.
Dobes said that they have seen many people coming back from last year wanting the same thing. He said that participating in the “Taste of the Fair” would help them retain other repeat customers.
Of course, you didn’t have to go to participating vendors to find what you wanted. Linda Hooks, of Lima, and her family get a fair pass every year and attend every day. While they admire some of the shows and seeing the animals, they are there for one main reason.
“The food is what makes it special,” Hooks said.
Hooks said the family frequents Blaine Rex’s Pennsylvania Dutch Funnel Cakes stand over the course of the fair and that the family would buy several of the cakes before the fair was over. Rex’s father opened the stand in 1975. His father has since died, but now his daughters are helping out. It is now a third-generation business. Hooks and Rex are very familiar with each other this time of year.
“My mother and father started out doing it with a big wood wagon,” Rex said. “We are still here 41 years later.”
Of course, if you are attending the fair but looking for something more traditional to eat, the Bath Parent Teacher Society also has you covered. If corn dogs and waffles are not your thing, you can get baked steak or chicken and noodles with heaps of mashed potatoes in the popular fair booth.
“Originally this started in 1956 with the first fair,” said Tim Parker with the PTS. “A bunch of ladies got together and made homemade stuff and brought it to the fair to sell.”
The Bath food building operates daily with school-related clubs, with teachers, the band, the football team, the soccer team and other groups pulling shifts to keep it going.
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