The Lay’s Potato Chip Drink Is the Most Unhinged Semifinalist in the 2024 State Fair of Texas Big Tex Food List

If you want a trend prediction, look to the State Fair of Texas semifinalists this year: there are 10 in the savory category and 14 sweets. That is unusual — typically the savories not only out number but out power the sweets, by far.

Things sound just fine, for the most part, on the savory side of the semifinalists list. But many of the sweets are straight up wild. And not all of them are strictly sweet.

Here’s the list this year. You’ll be able to taste them at the fair starting on September 27.

Savory

Deep Fried Crispy Vietnamese Crepes

Better known as deep fried banh xeo, these Vietnamese crepes get an extra-crispy makeover for the fair, courtesy of a deep fryer. The crepe is filled with meat, dipped in a dipped in a golden crepe batter that tastes of coconut, and served with a dipping sauce on a bed of lettuce. Hey, that’s a vegetable!

Dominican Dog

What happens when you take Dominican queso frito and salami frito, dip them in corn dog batter, and deep fry it? These folks call it a Dominican dog and then drizzle it with a secret sauce and add crushed garlic plantain chips and chopped cilantro. What could the secret sauce be? Chimichurri? Is that too obvious?

The Drowning Taquitos

This one is a chicken taquito that gets deep fried (who would have guessed?) and is served in a cup with cream sauce, jalapeno, guacamole salsa, shredded lettuce, chunks of avocado, tomatillo, pico, and Cotija cheese. You get it, it’s drowning in its toppings. Sorry in advance but no way this wins.

Fat Bacon Pickle Fries

Take a deep fried pickle sliver (yes, not even the whole pickle because apparently we’re being judicious this year), batter and fry it, dust it with spicy ranch pepper seasoning, and cover it in queso — but you’re not done yet. Then these suckers get topped like a baked potato with thick-cut maple caramelized bacon chunks, sour cream, jalapenos, and chives. Hopefully they’re giving out forks to eat this with.

Hammy Pimento Meltdown

Someone added black forest ham to a pimento cheese sandwich and grilled it on two pieces of Texas toast. That’s it, that’s the whole bite. It sounds excellent.

Hippie Chips

This one takes a serving of potato chips and coats them in your choice of ranch or blue cheese dressing, then that gets topped with chopped green onions, bacon bits, sriracha, and blue cheese crumbles. This could practically be gourmet food, or could be a high school cafeteria experiment. Probably great when you’re high.

Hot Chick-in-Pancake Poppers

It’s Nashville hot chicken with pimento cheese (a delicious combo), covered with pancake batter (the wheels are coming off this idea now), fried, and drizzled with sriracha honey and Nashville hot powered sugar (what the hell is that?). Not gonna lie, slightly scared of this one.

Oktoberfest Pizza

In honor of the month of October, someone decided to top pizza with a spicy mustard-infused white cream sauce, top it with mozzarella and cheddar, add German sausage, skillet fried potatoes, sauteed onions, green peppers, and sauerkraut. This is easily the most interesting savory dish. Easily.

Texas Fried Burnt End Bombs

It’s burnt ends wrapped with shredded potato, bacon, and a green onion mixture and then deep fried. So, kind of a fully loaded and deep fried baked potato? Except instead of sour cream, this is served with a side of raspberry chipotle barbeque sauce. Intriguing.

Triple Meat Big Back Snack

Okay, brace yourself: this is like a seven-layer dip but for meat. The base layer is elote. That gets topped with chopped beef brisket, then smoked gouda mac and cheese, then a buttermilk biscuit, and finally the last topper is cubed Hogzilla pork belly burnt ends. That is not enough, however. The dish also has a loaded nacho beef brisket sausage link (what??) cut in halves and topped with deep-fried crinkle-cut maple waffle-flavored potato slices. That’s less of a snack and more of a whole meal.

Sweet

Beso De Angel

This bite starts with a sugary fritter formed into the shape of a taco that gets filled with sweet crema, strawberry preserves, whipped cream, cajeta caramel, sweetened condensed milk, and is finally topped with sliced fresh strawberries. Its inspiration comes from traditional Mexican desserts like the buñuelo and fresas con crema.

Caramel Macchiato Fritters

Coffee cake balls get filled with a hefty serving of caramel, then dipped in beignet batter and deep fried. They are, of course, topped with whipped cream, caramel, and white chocolate drizzle. Finally, they’re injected with a shot of espresso to counteract all that sugar.

Cookie Butter Nachos

To make this one, flour tortilla chips get coated cinnamon sugar. They’re served with a scoop of cookie butter cheesecake filling and topped with cream cheese icing, caramel sauce, and crushed Biscoff cookies. Sounds like a good one for walking around and eating.

Cotton Candy Bacon on a Stick

As any smart physicist would tell you, this one starts with bacon on a stick — that’s just science. That is dipped in a cotton candy syrup glaze and then it hits the cotton candy machine. This is a brilliant idea, bring it on.

Crookies

Yeah, it’s a croissant merged with a cookie and they’ve been viral on the internet all year. Next.

Frozen Limoncello

It’s frozen limoncello, which is certainly an upgrade from frozen lemonade. Next.

It’s Bananas…B-A-N-A-N-A-S

Take a banana shake and top it with banana pudding, and yes please. It’s topped with whipped cream, Nilla wafers, chocolate-covered bananas, and a caramel drizzle. They could leave the caramel off.

LAY’S Potato Chip Drink

This one is unhinged. These folks took Lay’s potato chips and combined them with mango, citrus juices, hot honey, jalapeno infused syrup, and strawberry drizzle. Its topped with sweet foam and Lay’s Sweet & Spicy Honey Potato Chips — okay what kind of manic made this up?

Nutty Bar-laska

This takes a chocolate-dipped nutty bar and rolls it in peanuts, then covers it with marshmallow fluff and toasts it — yes, like over a campfire so it’s burnt and crispy with melty marshy mellowy stuff. Somehow two Oreos get involved, along with strawberry sauce and freeze-dried strawberries. Who knows.

Standing on Business

It’s salted caramel ice cream from Howdy Homemade Ice Cream in a waffle cone bowl topped with a dark chocolate cookie from Cookie Society...topped by a piece deep fried sweet potato pie that has chocolate and caramel sauce, powdered sugar, whipped cream, a cherry, French fries, and a chicken wing. Good lord.

Strawberry Pop-Tarts® Beignetffle

This one combines beignet and croissant dough that gets topped with strawberry filling, vanilla icing, whipped cream piping, and sprinkles — and it’s served on a stick. So like a funfetti beignet? Somehow it all tastes like a strawberry pop-tart, allegedly.

Texas Sugar Rush Pickles

Cotton candy-flavored pickle slices — okay stop right there, that’s a hard no. Okay, fine, let’s continue. These flavor-infused pickle slices get covered in Lucky Charms, Froot Loops, and Cap’n Crunch, and are then layered in cotton candy, cotton candy sugar crystals and powdered sugar, strawberry sundae syrup, and vanilla ice cream. Ugh, no.

Tropical Two-Step Punch

This can be served alcoholic or NA, and seems to feature whatever variety of citrus, passionfruit, mango, or whatever is on hand that day. You’re going to need one with a heavy dose of booze to get through those weird sugary pickles.

Whole Bundt of Kisses

This starts with a deep fried 7Up bundt cake, which is a thing that exists, that gets filled with Belgian chocolate and is then topped with homemade chocolate chip cookies, miniature kisses, powdered sugar, a full-sized Hershey’s, whipped cream, and silver glitter. Okay, sure.