In a matter of weeks, West Springfield, Massachusetts, will a hub for all things fair and farming.
The Big E returns on Sept. 18, with an annual array of carnival cuisines – many of which were front and center at a special media preview Thursday.
Will there be a ton of deep-fried food stuffs this year? Absolutely. Will there be some inventive, crazy stuff that’s never been seen before? Yes. Will it be the kind of stuff that makes your primary care doctor say, “Stop eating that or you'll go on statins?” Also, yes.
Coming off a year that saw 1.5 million visitors journey to West Side, the Eastern States Exposition’s annual fair arrives in three weeks.
This time around, special dishes will range from White Hut’s “Uncrusta-Double Burger” -- a burger with peanut butter and jelly “Uncrustable” pockets serving as buns -- to the “Colossal Centennial Lobster Roll” from Yankee Boy.
Dessert offerings include a “Maple Creemee Bacon Waffle” served up by Ferrindino Maple of Hampden. Or, if you like your desserts on a popsicle stick, Moolicious of Southwick is offering its “Campfire on a Stick” bar.
“We've been playing with s'mores forever. I bought equipment three years ago – couldn’t make it work, couldn't make it work… and this year, we finally decided we were going to go all-in, and we did it,” said Joe Deedy, the ice creamery’s co-owner. “It's vanilla ice cream - our hard vanilla ice cream - with a marshmallow center that we char first - it's burnt marshmallow, literally.”
Think Klondike Bar… but on a stick! Such novelties are a staple at the 17-day fair – just like the fair itself is a staple for the hundreds of local vendors that set up shop.
"It keeps us open," Deedy said. "You’ve got to realize, in this day and age, you’ve got to be able to market yourself. To bring that product to the Big E… even today's event alone - I can't afford the advertising dollars to get in front of everybody - we just can't – and, here we are today, in front of a lot of people. Whether you have six followers or 600 followers or 6,000, someone's gonna see it."
Echoing that was Ed Borgatti of EB’s restaurant — a beloved chicken joint nearby, across the Westfield River in Agawam. His outfit has been at the fair since 2005, with his crew lugging over hundreds of pounds of chicken and working the fryers around the clock once festivities get underway.
This year, “Fried Turkey Dinner” balls adorned in gravy will be served.
“We had the popularity of our fried shepherd's pie and our fried bacon mac and cheese over the years – this is our first new introduction in over 10 years for another main item,” Borgatti said. “We made a fried turkey dinner - it's just a combination of ground turkey, stuffing, craisins rolled into a ball, deep fried… turkey gravy, [with] some cranberry sauce on the side, of course, to complete it. So, yeah, we're excited about it.”
As a recent economic impact study commissioned by the ESE found, the Big E and other events held at the fairground combine to make an annual impact of $1.1 billion – an impact spread out across New England and New York.
Those events include the Fiber Festival of New England and various conventions and shows held in West Side – and help support 8,000 jobs – including 5,400 in Hampden County, says ESE CEO Gene Cassidy.
As he emphasizes every year, Cassidy says the fair remains devoted to all things agricultural – from the foodstuffs being fried to the growers who make it all possible.
“The real mission is our agricultural mission - driving agricultural markets for the agriculturalists in all of not just New England and the eastern states, but 28 states in the United States, plus two Canadian provinces,” Cassidy said. “So, when you come to the Eastern States Exposition, if you're a fairgoer… you're supporting agriculture in a vast majority of the United States and that's something that oftentimes gets lost in the mix. But that's our mission, and I'm proud of it.”
Reminders fill the pack each year, from butter statues to the 4-H club hubs – Cassidy says the 4-H pledge itself was technically written on the fairgrounds.
This, on top of the couple hundred vendors that crowd the Midway, Commonwealth Avenue and massive convention buildings.
That includes the NOLA Cajun Kitchen & Raw Bar, where owner Bill Collins and crew will be serving up Cajun Lobster Tail “Hushpuppy-Style” skewers.
“So it's a lobster tail on a skewer - we've got a little bit of Cajun dust, then we hit it with a hushpuppy batter, a little bit of Mike's Hot Honey Drizzle… then we do a Creole aioli, some corn salsa,” he said. “It is carnival. It is coastal. It's creative. And most of all, it's Cajun.”
And if you like to play with your food, there’s always K’s Japanese Restaurant from Westfield, offering a sushi push-pop.
“So basically, it’s sushi in a tube,” owner Eddie Chen explained, with a tube of soy sauce in hand and a cylinder loaded with a California roll inside. “You’ve got the soy sauce stick on the side, you get the lip open, then you put the soy sauce [stick in the bottom] and… it’s sushi on the go! No chopsticks needed.”
Thursday’s media preview was once again filled with local reporters as well as social media influencers – all devoted to spotlighting the dishes. Ken Stomski was among them – both the creator of Ken’s Den Films on YouTube and director of Channel 15 local access in Southwick.
He said the sushi push pop was a winner – but dessert-wise, the s'mores bar takes the cake. As does Moolicious’s other offering…
"The other one, which is a real surprise – the hot buttered popcorn ice cream. The butter is real butter - it solidifies when it hits that soft serve, so you're literally eating butter, which you know… a little butter is not going to kill you,” Stomski said. “You know, I have a heart doctor and he said it's okay, but… before the butter solidifies, it's rolled around in popcorn dust, and it tastes like you're eating hot popcorn at a movie. It's completely insane.”
This year’s edition of The Big E runs from Sept. 18 to Oct. 4.
