Inside how this year’s Best New Food was created
When chef Joni Bell disappeared into her kitchen-turned-laboratory to work up a new food for the 2023 Iowa State Fair, she started with spaghetti sandwiches.
She and her siblings ate spaghetti sandwiches for supper all the time during long summer days on the farm. Her family may have been poor, sure, but they were rich in love, and those sandwiches still remind her of a slower time. A time when a bicycle meant pure freedom, and her biggest concern was how long she could play outside before the sun went down and mom called her in.
Those sandwiches are from a time of warmth. A time of family. A time of comfort.
And to Bell, great food ― even if it is served on a stick ― is an expression of all that joy and all those memories.
“I’ve been called a concoctor,” she said.
She’s also been called a winner, taking home the People’s Choice for Best New Food at the State Fair three separate times. And she’s the contest’s first ever back-to-back champion, having won last year for the Rib Shack’s The Finisher, a loaded baked potato extravaganza, and this year for What’s Your Cheez’s deep-fried bacon brisket mac-n-cheese grilled cheese.
“It’s incredible to win two years in a row, but you got to be on your ball,” she says. “You got to be creative. It takes a lot.”
And in the case of the deep-fried grilled cheese, her creativity started with spaghetti sandwiches. But she modernized the dish by swapping spaghetti for bacon brisket mac and cheese, and she State Fair-ized it by deep frying the whole thing. Like a Monte Cristo but make it Iowan.
And lest you forget that the beloved east side caterer is a chef to her core, she gussied her new recipe with bacon cheddar bread from longtime partner Big Sky Bakery and a raspberry chipotle barbecue sauce, served on the side for dipping.
“I say you got to put the sauce with it. That makes it so different,” Bell says. “Then it’s really like, ‘Oh my God, that is totally different.’”
With each addition over…
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