What is Montana’s Favorite Fair Food?

Today's trip down memory lane for 2020 takes us back to a simpler time - right around the start of summer. Remember back in June and July, before the pandemic ramped up to where it is now, when one of the big topics of discussion was if fairs would or wouldn't happen? To cure my own curiosity, I just did a random check of days from Montana's COVID-19 case map - June 21st showed 17 cases and July 19th had 83 cases. Pretty crazy when you consider our last three days of reported totals are now 694, 757, and 909.

But lets get back to those fairs that were pretty much cancelled across the country. Did they leave you craving some of the food items that you would only allow yourself to splurge on once a year? I love me some fair food! Warm elephant ears, $7 hamburgers that aren't worth a $1, a 3 pound pile of curly fries that aren't even that good, eating half of my kid's cotton candy that I would never eat at any other time of the year, and you have to throw in a deep fried Oreo......you just have to eat at the fair!

A website called Gurney's did an article on what fair foods we miss the most with the lack of fairs this year. It's not exactly research that was done at one of the finest universities in the land - they looked at Google Trends search data - but it's kind of interesting to see what they list as the top choice for every state.

Funnel cake, kettle corn, fudge.....those were a few fair classics to top the list. Cotton candy was the overall winner with eight states. And you have to love deep fried butter snagging the top spot in two states. As for Montana? We were one of three states where cinnamon rolls claimed victory. Really? You can get a cinnamon roll anywhere around town. Pop into the grocery store and you can get a cinnamon roll. I wouldn't even consider that to be much of a fair food......but that's just me.

If you've been thinking about opening a food booth at the fair, you might want to make sure you're serving up delicious cinnamon rolls - apparently Montanans are spending plenty of time looking them up online. Who knew.

Here's the breakdown of The Most Popular Fair Food in Every State.