Fall is here, the extremely dry leaves are falling, the weather is turning wonderfully crisp,  Halloween is right around the corner, so that must mean the Arkansas State Fair is here. Running Oct. 14-23, you’ll be able to get your fair food fix and ride the Gravitron 15 times in a row. Or if you’re like me spend unmentionable amounts of hard earned cash trying to hook a ring attached to a stick to the lip of a glass bottle and raise it from a lying position to a standing position. The game is Bottle Up and it must be conquered at all costs.

Arkansas food author and historian Kat Robinson has been covering the State Fair food for 15 years. Yesterday she released her 2022 Arkansas State Fair Food Guide where she broke the shocking revelation that the Fair will be serving Pepsi this year instead of Coke. Pepsi float, anyone?

The Arkabsas State Fair will be selling Pepsi products instead of Coke products this year. Of course, hand-squeezed lemonade, fruit punch and iced tea will still be available, along with Hiland milk and black coffee. pic.twitter.com/ZIDWjWgxDf

— Kat Robinson (@TieDyeTravels) October 11, 2022

We called her up to see what else is new this year. Bookmark her guide because she updates it when necessary, and she’ll be adding to it after exploring the midway on Friday.

The following has been edited for length and clarity.

How long have you been covering the fair?

Fifteen years actually going out and researching. I’ve had connections with the fair since I was a kid, and we used to do live shots whenever I worked in television. But for the past 15 years since I’ve started writing about food, I’ve been covering the State Fair and it’s been interesting to see how it’s evolved.

What’s changed over the years?

When I started the most unusual things that you had were Paizi Gyros, which has a been a fair staple for decades now. They might have had an unusual funnel cake, but back in 2007/2008 there really wasn’t much strange food out there. The first odd item that was introduced at the Arkansas State Fair came in 2008 and it was called the Pig Licker. It was literally chocolate covered bacon, and people lost their minds. … It’s very much a local flavor here. I love the evolution of it, especially because we’ve gone from years where everything was deep fried and covered in chocolate back to something far more reasonable.

What’s new this year?

There’s some local operations like the Arkansas Cattleman’s Association this year will be running the Midway Cafe, which is a permanent structure at the end of the swine barn at the end of the midway. This year there will be an emphasis on steak. In fact the steak sandwich they say to pronounce it samich. [From Robinson’s guide: Steak Samich (you gotta say it that way) — a four ounce steak cooked to medium on a bun with caramelized onion, cheese and a special horseradish sauce. It comes with a side for $12.50.]

We have vendors all over Arkansas, but we also have vendors from outside the state. We’ve got a couple of new vendors coming in that I suspect will get a lot of notice. One of them is Bryan’s Sirloin Tips — they’re out of Indiana — and the other one is Happi Lao, which is a Laotian food truck from Iowa.

Where should I send surly colleagues or fair scrooges who dismiss fair food as bad or unhealthy, but they have a limited sample size due to their opinions from 15 years ago?

You have places where you can fresh roasted corn, you can get baked potatoes, or grilled chicken. There’s a variety of salads and different types of street tacos. It’s healthier than it was. And I’m not saying the fair is healthy pursuit. … It’s all about moderation though. But even something like a roasted turkey leg is not a bad thing in moderation, so maybe grab your turkey leg when you’re heading out of the fair and slice it up and share with the family because they’re big enough to share with the whole family. Unless you go H2Que and get yourself a macaroni and cheese-stuffed turkey leg.

It’s also an opportunity to support Arkansas vendors. Pat’s Kitchen and L&M Concessions and Swaim’s Pizza on a Stick — these are all local folks doing their best to make a living, and this is one of their biggest paychecks of the year. How their season goes literally can be the difference between whether it rains or not and how many people actually attend.

We also live in a very different food culture. I mean 2007 really was the vanguard of a new culinary age here in Arkansas. That’s when we started seeing our organic farms and the certified Arkansas Farmers Market pop up and the culinary school at Pulaski Tech. You’ve got Brightwater [A Center for the Study of Food]. You’ve got different places where people are being educated and you have a whole class of culinarians who have come in and shown us all the cool stuff we can do with food. So a lot of people view the State Fair as a very rural experience, nostalgia trapped in time, but you can get dishes at the state fair that bring Arkansas-specific nostalgia like Arkansas-style cheese dip. You can’t call it Mexico Chiquito anymore, but it’s the same cheese dip that they served back whenever the Big Show Diner was an actual outlet of Mexico Chiquito in the 1980s. You’ve got the Arkansas State Fair Fruit Punch. You can go to the Arts and Crafts building and have a glass of Post Familie wine and a fried pie made by a grandmother who lives close by.

What’s your go to State Fair meal?

My usual go-to is Pat’s Chicken, where I get myself an Indian frybread taco. I get it on my way out it is two or even three meals worth of food. Fresh tomato and onions, homemade salsa on freshly made frybread. I wish we had more frybread places around Arkansas, that would absolutely be grand. If you want to be cheap but healthy get yourself some milk from Highland Dairy at the top of the hill. I believe they’re still school sized cartons for .50 cents a piece. Even if they increase it to a dollar it’s still going to be the cheapest thing you can get on the fairgrounds.

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