I Tried the MN State Fair Oysters in 94-Degree Heat so You Don’t Have to

The Minnesota State Truthful has an simple, supernatural energy to develop on its guests. The honest doesn’t a lot grind down its haters because it takes an early kernel of pleasure and slowly provides to it layer by layer, 12 months by 12 months. The particulars of this unusual development, after all, rely upon the depth and taste of 1’s curiosity. 

This partially explains how somebody may get up at some point, years faraway from their first State Truthful go to, with a screaming want to face within the late-August warmth swigging milk alongside a barn teeming with nursing sows. Haunted girl that I’m, I’ve spent the higher a part of twenty years combating off the urge to order oysters on the honest. Solely yesterday, amid 94-degree actual-temperature warmth, did I lastly lose that battle.

It’d be comprehensible to put in writing off this darkish fascination as a bout of recurrent delusion. I imply, why would there be shellfish on the Nice Minnesota Get-Collectively? To my data, 4-H doesn’t (but) supply native rivals the chance to exhibit their prowess in farming and harvesting cockles, clams, and/or oysters. 

Counterintuitively, being hundreds of miles from the closest briny bay appears to have fed oysters’ tendency to crop up unexpectedly right here within the Twin Cities. Perhaps you keep in mind within the early 2010s, when the erstwhile Nomad World Pub supplied $1 oysters on their West Financial institution patio throughout soccer season. No? Properly, that period was brief lived, nevertheless it additionally undoubtedly occurred! Equally, it’s not precisely apparent why a park shelter at Minnehaha Falls would host a bustling (and trusted!) open-air seafood joint primarily throughout months that finish in -y, however since I’m not right here to wreck good issues, we’ll hold this transferring alongside. 

Level is: The concept of oysters on the State Truthful is bizarre, to borrow Gov. Tim Walz’s in vogue descriptor. However we exist within the context of *mumble mumble* and if we’re being utterly sincere, the whole State Truthful is fairly bizarre! Or at the least wildly chaotic.

Amid the chaos, you may be forgiven for not paying attention to the Fish & Chips Seafood Shoppe. Till lately it had occupied a fiendish little perch on the nook of Liggett & Carnes, inside an unappetizing distance of each the Horse Barn and Mighty Halfway. It’s simply that after I noticed it, I couldn’t unsee it. 

Now celebrating its fiftieth 12 months, the Seafood Shoppe relocated contained in the Meals Constructing across the nook from the Mouth Lure, perennial heaviest-hitters within the honest’s cheese curd recreation. You’ll know you’ve discovered the proper place when the group thins beneath a mustard yellow marquee that screams SCALLOPS, CALAMARI, and CLAM STRIPS in a classy Nineteen Seventies-does-Nineteen Thirties font. You can be the one particular person in line. 

The Seafood Shoppe is staffed by chatty, largely bored younger adults who—to their credit score—mentioned that ordering lobster is The Transfer. Sadly solely oysters (and possibly clams) would put an finish to my particular affliction, so I didn’t take their suggestion. 

As an alternative I went for the sampler on a stick. With three mini crab cake balls, one fried oyster sandwiched between a coconut shrimp and one other plain ol’ fried shrimp, plus a block of fried salmon and a pair of fried scallops. Solely clam strips could be absent from the buffet.

“They’re tremendous lengthy and skinny,” defined a youth on the register. “Actually arduous to get on a stick.” He made a gesture suggesting a (temporary) lifetime teeming with frustration from having tried, time and again, to pierce a clam strip with a blunt picket rod.

After handing over $15.95, one other very youthful particular person knowledgeable me, “This can take a bit longer.” 

“Good!” I blurted.

The solely factor that might undoubtedly flip ordering shellfish within the oceanless Midwest throughout an August heatwave at a meals stand with no line right into a wholly doomed proposition could be receiving your order instantly. 

The subsequent nonetheless many minutes handed in deep contemplation of the a long time of decisions that had led to this time and place, all whereas sweating profusely in stagnant air. Later, the radio weatherman would announce that, at roughly this second, the warmth index had crept as much as almost 110 levels. 

That is the half the place I let you know how a lot I actually, actually wished to be shocked on the State Truthful. In spite of everything these years of fairgoing, I hoped to search out one thing neglected to maybe be tried and true—possibly new to me, however good. 

I really like oysters and have a wholesome disregard for my physique. I’m a straightforward promote! I really like the way in which oysters style. I really like that loving them means spending a lifetime tinkering in quest of the right, ever-evolving saucy garnish. I really like imagining the primary time some very hungry particular person tried to eat a rock on the seaside and was shocked to search out A Little Deal with inside. And I really like the ritual borne of that first expertise—particularly the way it morphed into battered and skewered idiocy served on a ruffled paper sizzling canine dish with a wee packet of Frank’s Pink Sizzling sauce.

I deeply didn’t wish to be disenchanted. However we all know that’s not how issues went. 

Hear me after I say this: Don’t get the oysters on the Minnesota State Truthful. 

(These little crab muffins are fairly respectable, although.)