A Call to Arms: Keep Fair Food at the Fair!

There are some foods that shouldn’t exist in nature, like deep fried Oreos, foot-long corn dogs, fried cheesecake, candy apples, and and chicken-on-a-stick. As such, nature has banished them to the land of play and fun, the state fair, and kept them away from our everyday life. And it's for the best. Just imagine the cosmic imbalance that would occur if deep fried Oreos start appearing on every street corner, or if candy apples started appearing as dessert at, say, Citronelle.

Even so, those foods have begun to creep into everyday life. You can buy Candy Apples at some candy stores, and you can get deep fat fried Mars Bars at every takeaway in Scotland. But there's one food that's been protected throughout the years. It is the ultimate fair food: The Funnel Cake.

The Funnel Cake is so perfect because it is so simple. You take some dough, take boiling oil in a giantic drum, and twirl the dough in. You cover it in powdered sugar, and you eat. And you dump the powdered sugar all over your shirt. Luckily, you're at the fair, where calories don't count and no one notices the faint mist of powedered sugar covering your t-shirt.

Now, another bastion of American life, has brought these two worlds onto a collision course. The International House of Pancakes, that “American family tradition” (as the posters adorning the wall proudly proclaim) is in the midst of its IHOP Funnel Cake Carnival. That’s right, the ultimate fair food, Funnel Cake, is now available at your neighborhood IHOP. In fact, you get “two warm, delicious funnel cakes with creamy whipped topping, powdered sugar and your choice of fruit topping: strawberry, blueberry, cinnamon-apple or red, white & blueberry (strawberries, whipped topping and blueberries).”

It's a travesty, I tell you. How can you eat a Funnel Cake when you're not trying to balance it on one hand, afraid of dropping it on the ground, while ripping off pieces with the other? How can you serve fried dough, with approximately 40 grams of fat, in the real world -- where calories count? And how can IHOP tempt us with those glorious mounds of fried dough available any time want them?

I have to admit that I passed on the Funnel Cake during our last IHOP trip, choosing to believe that fair food should remain at the fair (and because I love my arteries). Still, I believe I can hear that sound off in the distance of the two worlds – the far-off, fantastical world of fair food and the natural, everyday world of diner cuisine – colliding. And I are very afraid.

So we beseech our readers. Should you live in the vicinity of an IHOP, don’t try the Funnel Cake. Make a statement: fair food belongs at the fair. But should you slip-up, and decide it’s just too long to wait for the next State Fair for that fried doughy goodness, perhaps you could save us a little piece?