By admin 
Leading up to state fair season every year, there’s always lots of excited coverage of new and interesting foods to be had. Everything over-the-top, trendy, and colorful seems to be available.
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This year’s California State Fair is no different, with a whole slate of trendy foods such as Dubai chocolate strawberries, drinks in oversized baby bottles, and crunchy tanghulu fruit sticks.
What’s new always gets a lot of attention. But while trends come and go, some foods at the fair have been feeding crowds for generations.
Inside Building A sits the large gleaming booth housing Country Fair Cinnamon Rolls. It bristles with colorful ribbons for all the fair food competitions they’ve won. And despite the heat outside, there’s always a line for their hot and sticky cinnamon rolls.
The business has a long history at the California State Fair. “Next year will be our big 50th anniversary,” said Abigail Madaus, the general manager, daughter of owner William Madaus, and the third generation to help run the cinnamon roll stand. “It’s a super humbling legacy to be a part of,” Madaus said.
Country Fair Cinnamon Rolls doesn’t shy away from trends. They offer a bacon-covered cinnamon roll, and this year, they’re selling a Biscoff-flavored roll, topped off with one of the sandy cookies.
“The new rolls are novel, and people come to the fair for novelty,” Madaus said. But cinnamon rolls themselves are “a familiar product that people know,” and that keeps people coming back year after year, she added.
The tagline of this year’s fair is “Wish You Were Here,” which has “a nostalgic emphasis,” said Cal Expo’s Alex Alcantar, the director of marketing and business development.
For many, memories of the California State Fair revolve around food. Ron and Kathie Giarmona, two long-time fairgoers, lined up on the first day to get their cinnamon rolls from Country Fair. “It seems like forever that they’ve been around,” said Kathie. “There’s always good memories here.”
Ron Giarmona recalled working the fair back when it was located at Stockton and Broadway, before it moved to Cal Expo in 1968. The only times he ever missed the Fair were during his years in the Navy.
“That hot dog on a stick, I won’t go home without one,” he said.
In fact, corn dogs are another specialty of the California State Fair. Long-time vendor Milo Franks runs several stands throughout the fairgrounds, where they’ve sold corn dogs for the past 56 years. Their show-stopping item is the jumbo corn dog, a giant baton of fried dough encasing a half-pound hot dog.
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While favorites like Milo Franks and Country Fair have spent nearly half a century feeding fairgoers, they’re outliers. Some treats enjoyed for generations are long gone. For example, while you can still get an egg roll on a stick (what The Sacramento Bee called “a State Fair icon” in 1996), you can no longer enjoy a Merlino’s orange freeze on the grounds.
One long-term fair favorite you won’t see at Cal Expo in 2026 is the Original Soft Taco. The long, paper-wrapped tacos got their start at the fair in 1947, where they remained a staple for decades.
The business is still around, making appearances at the Lodi Grape Festival and the Big Fresno Fair. But Nina Martinez, who owns the Original Soft Taco along with her husband Benny Martinez, knows that people are disappointed not to find them at the State Fair. “I feel so bad,” she said.
At every event where she sells the tacos, people line up to tell her about their State Fair memories. “It really breaks my heart,” she said. “The stories go back to when their parents were still alive.”
These days, though, going to the State Fair is hard for the Martinez family. “The State Fair is really close to our hearts, because that’s where we started,” she said. “After Covid we started to downsize, and of course, we’re getting older. That’s the main issue.”
For many people who spent decades going to the State Fair, the tacos have reached almost legendary status. “We have people show up and buy 100 tacos, 50 tacos, 75 tacos,” Martinez said, adding that they take them home to freeze.
Martinez and her family have run the business for more than 50 years, after her parents took over from the original owner Oscar Chapa. Before he died, Martinez said, Chapa asked her father never to change the recipe.
“It’s a soft taco, rolled like a little taquito,” Martinez said, filled with ground beef, cooked vegetables, and spices. Not changing the recipe has kept it the same taco that people remember from their childhoods.
“We come to the fair, we have to have a corn dog, we have to have a taco, and we have to have a cinnamon roll. That is what they tell me,” she said.
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