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Apr 21, 2024

There are no garbage plates at the NYS Fair, so we made our own: The State Fair Plate (video)

Our self-made New York State Fair garbage plate. (Charlie Miller | [email protected]) Geddes, N.Y. — You can find Buffalo chicken wings, Binghamton-born spiedies, New York City pizza and Syracuse

Our self-made New York State Fair garbage plate. (Charlie Miller | [email protected])

Geddes, N.Y. — You can find Buffalo chicken wings, Binghamton-born spiedies, New York City pizza and Syracuse Italian sausage at the New York State Fair. Heck, Utica’s tomato pie, riggies and beer are all over the Fairgrounds.

How can vendors represent all of the state’s cities and leave out our fine neighbors to the west? The State Fair has no garbage plate, the signature dish of Rochester.

“Wait, what? We don’t?” said State Fair Director Sean Hennessey. “That doesn’t seem right.”

Excellent point, Sean. It doesn’t. So I took this urgent matter into my own hands and created my own garbage plate, State Fair style.

I walked around the Fair with a 12-by-9-inch aluminum pan and filled it with some well-known morsels.

It took me about an hour to fill this casserole dish with nearly 3 pounds of food that ended up costing $55.50. While that might seem like a lot of money, the garbage plate ended up being enough for six people, with some left over.

The original garbage plate from Nick Tahou Hots in Rochester uses homefries as a base. Since this is mess of Fair foods, I started with a layer of Potatoes O’Rielly from Bosco’s on Restaurant Row. These deep-fried potato slices dusted with salt and parsley have been a top seller here since the 1970s.

A layer of macaroni salad is next in a traditional garbage plate. We subbed the salad for smoked macaroni and cheese from Cinder BBQ, a 2-year-old stand from Frisco, Texas. This cup o’ gooey pasta wouldn’t spread with my fork so I stole a few plastic knives from a stand that didn’t make the cut for this recipe.

Nick Tahou uses meat sauce next; I used all the insides of a Kiki’s gyro. I scraped the grilled pita of its lamb, lengthwise cucumber slices, chopped tomato, red onion, kalamata olives, feta cheese and the tzatziki sauce. I used the pita as a snack during my mandatory break at the Beer Garden.

Since the much-celebrated Beef Day was approaching, I added an order of Pickle Barrel’s sirloin tips to the mix, complete with mashed potatoes and marinated mushrooms. The Pickle Barrel platter was, after all, just inducted into our State Fair Food Hall of Fame last week.

You can’t create a Fair plate without an Italian sausage. The fine high school lads working Jimmy B’s stand hooked me up with a Gianelli sandwich loaded with peppers and onions. I butterflied the 8-inch link for presentation, although at this point my entrée was starting to look like its name.

A garbage plate in Rochester often comes with ends from a loaf of Italian bread. It only made sense to garnish my plate with strips of Pizze Fritte, the Syracuse-invented fried dough coated with cinnamon-sugar.

Like any true Fair-goer, we washed the first few bites down with 25-cent milk from the Dairy Building’s Milk Bar.

“Well, how was it?” asked the Fair director.

Honestly, Sean, it was delicious. No two ingredients conflicted with each other. I feared the tzatziki sauce would interfere with the potatoes and medium rare beef. The yogurt-based condiment actually made it better.

I shared the garbage plate with some strangers at the Tully’s Draft House, the beer stand next to Gate 1 that I use as my office during the Fair. Even they were impressed with the blend of familiar flavors methodically thrown together.

Don’t be surprised if you see this on a State Fair menu next year. Tom Centore, the vendor known for reinventing fair foods from around the country for his stands here, already has his thinking cap on.

“Oh, I’m doing a State Fair garbage plate. Bank on it,” he said. “What goes into that again?”

Here’s the recipe, Tommy:

Total: $55.50

****

Charlie Miller finds the best in food, drink and fun across Central New York. Contact him at (315) 382-1984, or by email at [email protected]. (AND he pays for what he and his guests eat and drink, just so you know.) You can also find him under @HoosierCuse on Twitter and on Instagram. Sign up for his free weekly Where Syracuse Eats newsletter here.

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