This is your captain speaking. I'm Arna yetan, captain of All in America line, Emma's Maston. You're listening to the so-called restaurant show on AM 830 KLAA. And welcome back. It is the SoCal restaurant show, and we're here with you every Saturday morning from 10 AM until 12 noon, right here on AM830 KLAA, the home of Angels Baseball 2024. And you can also catch us on the AM830 KLAA app. And the halos are on the road. It's a matinee game with Oakland looking to even up the series. And Angels pregame follows us at 1230 with Terry Smith. I am Andy Harris, the executive producer and co-host of the show. Thanks for being out there. And we're enthusiastically presented each and every week by Melissa's World Variety Produce and West Coast Prime Eats. It's fair time and the Orange County Fair opened yesterday. And of course, when we're talking about the fair, particularly on the SoCal restaurant show, it's all about fair food. And representing the creative concessionaires that are out at the fair is the Midway gourmet himself Dominic Palmeri. We always like to get the fair overview from him and it is a pleasure to welcome Chef Dominic back to the show. Dominic opening day yesterday. How did it go? The energy, the excitement, the electricity in the air. If anybody saw one of the live posts I did or anything on the Midway gourmet Instagram yesterday, you actually got to see they did an actual ribbon cutting yesterday, right there at Bluegate. So much fun watching that ribbon get cut. And when it dropped and hit the ground, you could see the people just running into the fair. It's one of those things that it made the biggest kids turn into the littlest kids and the littlest kids had the biggest smiles on their face. And isn't that what a great county fair is all about? Absolutely. And Dominic, as we have discussed before, fairs, county fairs are a great institution. And in all honesty, the highest and best use of that land in Costa Mesa where the Orange County Fair is, is not for the purpose it's used for. And it's nothing short of a miracle that it has been able to endure. And I think it's long term future is secured. So that's a bonus. Yeah, absolutely. You know, OC is just a great place to be. You know, I just want to say that this is one of our favorite events of the year. Of course, we love the weather, right? Because we're a Phoenix, we're an Arizona based company. So being here in July and August when it was 115 yesterday in Phoenix and we were, I don't know, 81 degrees here at the coast at the fair. We love this event. We love the people. We love the community. You know, this is my 31st fair in the OC, 31 years. It's amazing how many people when I'm going around the midway and across the fairgrounds from end to end, how many people actually stop me and say, Oh my gosh, I love the new, the new foods. I love seeing you on TV. I love hearing you on the restaurant. I mean, all of these things on the SoCal restaurant show, we come every year. We can't wait to come back again next year. It just has that great community feel. But the best part about it is, I always say it. I'm a little, you know, kind of leaning toward the food side. It's all about the food for me, right? Dominic, we're in total agreement there. Now, something I know our listeners are curious about, Dominic, before we get into some of what your new fair foods are for this year, you are really heavy into research and development. And you have certain criteria for new items that are added to your overall concession menus in the various outlets on the, you know, RC Carnival Midway. Now, obviously, as our listeners know, it's got to be Instagrammable, but there's a lot more to it than that. Share some of those insights, if you will. Yeah. Well, the first thing is it just has to be rock star delicious, right? Because we're not looking for a one hit wonder. We're looking for something that's going to be really delicious, that's going to be memorable, that people are going to want to come back to year after year. Part of being at a fair and growing up at fairs across the country, of course, is the sort of the traditions that we created the fairs. And we've talked about this before. We've had some great conversations you and I about this. Fairs all started to showcase the best of what the county, the community had to offer. Well, now we're in a situation where we're trying to come up with these great new food items, and if it's, first of all, taste delicious, and then it's colorful, and then it's Instagrammable, and all those other things, we know that the rest of it will follow. I love, yesterday I loved watching how many people were in front of Biggie over on the RCS carnival midway, over in front of the Dutchman's funnel cake, over by the big giant fairs wheel, how many people have their foods, and we're taking pictures, but not only pictures of the food, they're taking the pictures of them with the food. I think that we really, we relate to that. It's ingrained in who we are as a community. We all gather around food. I don't care where in the world you come from. Food is one of the most important things that is the staple of our family, and this is what you get when you come to the OC fair. Well, it's a great connector, because it's something that everybody can talk about, Dominic, and it's a shared phenomenon. So, you know, definitely, absolutely as far as that's concerned. Now, Dominic, one of the trends that you seem to be running with this year is still pickle. So, let's start out with your most outrageous pickle creation for this year, and we'll get into some other delights. Yeah, so I've been saying that it's pickle-palooza summer. It's the summer of the pickle. And, you know, we started doing pickle items about four years ago. We kind of felt this was going to be a new trend long before it got popular on all the social media things. So, one of the new things that we have on the RCS carnival midway, the pickle split. I want you to imagine a giant six-inch jumbo-dill pickle cut in half just as if it were like a banana in a banana split. We cut the pickle in half long ways, and then right down the middle, we pipe in this beautiful, delicious, fluffy pineapple whip, pineapple-doll whip. Ice cream goes in there, and then, of course, it gets some chamois, some tahine, and it gets a little umbrella, but it's great because you get that bite, that spiciness, and that sort of acid from the pickle, and it goes really, really well with the pineapple whip ice cream, and very popular. That one's doing really well. The other one is the candied pickle, that same jumbo-dill pickle. We pour it out and stuff it with a sour spaghetti-string candy, and then it gets some chamois and some tahine on top. You eat that one, though, like a whole-dill pickle, and every time you bite into it, you're actually getting that sour candy, that string spake, spaghetti-string candy, bite in there, as well, and, of course, that spiciness from the chamois goes really well. Of course, we have the Chido cheese pickles. It's been a huge favorite. As a matter of fact, this is year four. We are shipping in, like, by the truckload, where everybody is shipping in pickles right now, and these pickles that come from Chicago are amazing. I want you to think of an extra thick, crinkle-cut, dill pickle slice with hot melted cheddar cheese, and crunchy, flaming hot Cheetos on top. Absolutely delicious. This is another one, as well. And then, of course, you know, Charlie, we have other concessionaires on the grounds. Charlie's doing the doctor-pecker, the doctor-pecker. One more time. See that one. The doctor-pepper-pickle soda. Wow. Easy. Easy for you to say, Dominic, right? Chicken, Charlie. So, everybody's got something new, and of course, the pickles are the pickle-palooza. It's just been really, really super fun. Of course, some of the new meats this year, we have the Nashville Hot Chicken Tots. And I'm just going to tell you, this is something that we really, we're really proud of this one because we push the limits and the bounds on. When we have tater tots, we can catch up and ranch. There's no catch up and ranch here. They're tossed. They come out of that fryer and they're tossed in a buttery, hot garlic sauce. And then it gets that Nashville Hot Chicken on top. And then, of course, it comes with some of the pickles. And that one is a really fun comfort food. We love that one because it's super gourmet. Everybody that bites into that tater tot is completely thrown because they've never had something so delicious. And frankly, I don't know why the gourmet world is so long to come up with a different condiment or for tater tots, but the garlic butter sauce just really works. The other one, of course, is our new honey sriracha bacon wrapped pork belly on a stick. And I'm going to tell you. I love that. Oh, man, it's just delicious. You know, of course, turkey legs and sausage and burgers and all the meats that you can think of, one of the new ones this year, butia burgers. Imagine a great hamburger that's got butia on top of it as well with all that juiciness that comes with butia. All of those things that the concessionaires at the OC Fair work so hard to innovate and come up with these delicious new items. But the best part about it is we can produce them in mass quantity. We can really pump it out. So the lines you get in line, you get your food quickly, you go sit down, you eat. The fair has done an amazing job of putting in seating areas everywhere. But the thing that I'm super excited about this year, and this is one of the most important, $5 value menu meal at every single food stand. You can go from 11 to 4 every day and get something for $5. The greatest value I think in the OC anywhere right now. No, that is a heck of a deal. And actually, Dominic, you mentioned what your $5 taste item was before, but you didn't identify it really as the $5 taste item. So before we go to break and pick up the conversation on the other side, you got to talk about what the Midway gourmet's $5 taste is. So we've got our new twisted lemonade at our squeezers lemonade stand. We're doing something really super fun. I've been working with a local Southern California vendor, and we have come up with an actual drizzle chamois that goes inside the cup. Before we put the lemonade in, and we have a mucho mango, we have a watermelon, and we have what we call a biko sito, a little hot and spicy. And you can get a $5 lemonade and eight lemonade stands. We've got garlic fries, we've got garlic-y tater tot, we've got little pickle dishes, we've got the pickle, a potato cheese pickles for $5. Everybody has something that's remarkable. We wanted to do more of a taste, more of a taste at the fair. And that's sort of what gives you the ability to go around, and give you some of the items when you come the first time, because there's so many things to do at the Orange County fair. You want to come back at least two times, three times would be a charm. I think you can come back with the rest of the family. You can have the larger portions and try some of the other things as well. Well, Dominic, who doesn't love to graze? And as you say, this gives people the opportunity to try a variety of things. So definitely makes sense. We are speaking with the Midway gourmet himself, Dominic Palmeri. You can find all of his outlets on the RCS Carnival Midway at the Orange County fair. We're going to pick up the conversation on the other side. You are listening to the SoCal restaurant show. We're proudly presented by Melissa's World Variety produce and West Coast Prime Meats. Give us a minute, we'll be back.
