When Mariam Mohamed got the call to be a vendor at the Minnesota State Fair, she couldn’t stop screaming for joy. After immigrating to the state nearly 40 years ago, and building a family in Minneapolis, she had walked the iconic fairgrounds with her children. But for the first time, she would stand on the other side of the counter as a vendor among nearly 300 concessions offering some 1,600 foods. Mohamed, the Somali entrepreneur behind Hoyo Sambusa, knew the fair was her chance to bring sambusas—fried triangular pastries filled with lentils and piled high in a giant cone—to an unprecedented audience and place them alongside the state’s most beloved classics. “I understand what it is like to be an immigrant in America. And so this [experience] is so real for me,” she recalls thinking.
For 12 days each year, nearly 2 million people pack the Minnesota State Fairgrounds in St. Paul to celebrate the state’s best. The large majority are Minnesotans, but a strong minority travel from places as far as France and South Korea to gorge on dairy or bizarre on-a-stick creations that defy both health and common sense. This gastro bacchanalia might look unchanged from a few decades ago, with 90-pound butter sculptures and century-old barns, towering carnival rides, and extravagant displays of agriculture. But each year, like other fairs around the country, it reinvents itself to mirror the state’s evolving tastes and demographics. And nowhere is that reinvention more visible than in the food concessions, where landing a booth can feel like a golden ticket.
The Evolution of Fair Foods
In 1841, New York’s agricultural society hosted what many consider the first modern state fair, where guests entered plowing contests and admired livestock and state-of-the-art farm machinery. Other states soon copied this model in hopes of attracting people who might have otherwise headed farther west.
But by the early 20th century, organizers began to fear that fairs seemed quaint compared to vaudeville, movies, and radio, according to historian Chris Rasmussen, author of Carnival in the Countryside: The History of the Iowa State Fair. Still, they recognized that entertainment drew crowds that also supported agricultural exhibits, so they leaned into both. As Smithsonian curator Mary Savig tells me, “The recipe’s been the same since the ’90s: animals, the carnival, the food, the games, the craft competitions, the dairy barn. It’s only gotten bigger.”
The first food stalls weren’t outlandish; they were church dining halls. At 128-years-old, Hamline Church Dining Hall, the Minnesota fair’s oldest food establishment, volunteers still serve meatballs, sausages, and eggs on porcelain plates. Mary Bloom, the dining hall’s cochair, began volunteering to keep tradition alive. “It’s built into our church heritage,” she says, gesturing at diners digging their silverware into hot prepared foods. “A lot of the fair workers come in every day because [they] get tired of corn dogs.” As decades went by, flashier vendors capitalized on on-the-stick obsessions and viral trends. Bloom says Hamline has endured because younger volunteers keep innovating: “We made more changes to the menu in the last 10 years than were ever made. We’re trying to keep up with the times.” At the earliest state fairs, attendees picnicked on the lawns with their own food. Soon after, church communities opened dining halls, offering sit-down meals away from the midway bustle. Minnesota boasted 89 such halls in 1903. Today, only two remain.
Today, institutions rule Minnesota’s fair: Sweet Martha’s Cookie Jar, founded in 1979, grossed a whopping $4.9 million in 12 days last year, and Pronto Pup, which debuted in 1947, sparked Minnesota’s obsession with skewered foods. But some of the longest lines also belong to immigrant-owned businesses constantly releasing new food items, such as Somali sambusas, Hmong galabao, and Vietnamese egg rolls on a stick. Their inclusion in the fair is a reflection of broader shifts in the state too. According to the US Census, the number of international migrants coming to Minnesota nearly doubled from 2023 to 2024.
But when did state fair food get so zany? Deep-frying and skewering are not novel concepts, but the shift was turbocharged in 2005, when Texas began crowning the most creative and best-tasting inventions. Karissa Condoianis, who runs public relations for the fair, says the first Big Tex Choice Awards garnered international press. “It’s really those top new foods at the State Fair [that] set the bar for our industry each year.” Deep-fried pho, Cuban rolls, and even jambalaya have all taken top honors. Since then, other fairs have followed suit, releasing their own lists that ripple through local media and social platforms every August.
Maya Omar, a Minneapolis resident and longtime fairgoer, was thrilled to see Somali street fries—a riff on suqaar, a Somali beef dish: “This is the first time I’ve ever heard Somali street food being introduced to the fair.”
Yia Vang, chef-owner of Vinai and one of Minneapolis’s most celebrated chefs, opened Union Hmong Kitchen, the fair’s first Hmong food stall, in 2022. This year he offered pork and shrimp laced with lemongrass, fish sauce, and Thai chiles on Texas toast, which, unsurprisingly, went on a stick: “It’s always about one good bite. I want people to taste this and then get curious enough to learn more about Hmong food.”
For Vang, the fair’s original mission is a reminder of his own journey: His family fled Laos, lived in a Thai refugee camp, and eventually settled in Wisconsin. “The fair started with the idea of farmers coming together and helping each other grow within the state,” he says.
Danielle Dullinger, the fair’s food and beverage manager who scouts potential vendors every year and encourages them to apply, puts Vang’s influence more plainly: “Someone from Ely, Minnesota, perhaps has never tried Hmong food. How cool that they can come here and try the best parts of our state?”
Beyond the Fairgrounds
As curiosity about the state fair grows and goes viral on social media, even the Smithsonian has taken notice. This summer the Renwick Gallery in Washington, DC, unveiled State Fairs: Growing American Craft, the first national exhibition to spotlight artists’ contributions to the fairgrounds. Savig, who grew up attending Minnesota’s state fair, pitched the idea during her job interview five years ago. “We wanted to show that craft is everywhere on the fairgrounds—and experimental food is certainly a part of that.”
Inside the gallery, a life-size butter cow from the Iowa State Fair stands near a rainbow pyramid of pickles by canning champion Rod Zeitler. Stories from tribal fairs, such as the Navajo Nation Fair in Arizona, showcase young women butchering sheep to display their knowledge of tradition. “Tribal fairs are a part of this because a lot are founded on these agricultural models,” Savig says. “And agriculture itself is known to the US because indigenous people taught colonizers how to survive.”
Right now state fairs across the country are either closing down or ramping up for a chaotic few weeks with crowds that could surpass previous attendance levels. In the meantime, Savig hopes people keep the conversation about fair foods and its evolving traditions alive—even after fair season wraps up—or stop by the museum for a jolt of inspiration. That is, without the on-the-stick foods, of course.
“People go to the fair, they see an artist doing something, and then they want to take it up,” she says. “Those moments are where radical innovation happens.”