Deep-fried grilled cheese wins top new food award at Iowa State Fair

DES MOINES — The team behind the Iowa State Fair’s best new food begins work before most fairgoers are awake — preparing macaroni and cheese and other components by 6 a.m. each day.

The deep-fried bacon brisket mac-n-cheese grilled cheese sandwich — a gooey, crispy, dense bomb of flavor from What’s Your Cheez — this week won the Best New Food award at the State Fair. Joni Bell, the owner of What’s Your Cheez and the creator of the dish, declined to take the credit herself for winning the award.

“It's not all about me," she said. "It's all our team here that makes this thing happen. There's a lot of work that goes into this."

What goes into the sandwich?

Tony Guerrero, who runs the Rib Shack, a stand nearby that Bell also owns, begins by cooking up the mac and cheese at 6 a.m. The stand will go through as many as 160 pans in a day, Bell said. Then, the fresh-baked bread from Urbandale’s Big Sky Bakery is brought in. The stand’s employees start building sandwiches right away, and they go in the fryer at 9:30 a.m. The vendor sold 14,000 sandwiches at $12 each as of Wednesday.

More than 8,000 people voted from three options to crown the winner, and 47 percent of votes were for the deep fried sandwich.

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The other options were the “Iowa Twinkie” from Watcha Smokin’ BBQ & Brew — a bacon-wrapped stuffed jalapeno pepper — and the “Grinder Ball” — a blend of bacon balls and mozzarella cheese, wrapped in bacon.

Sandwich creator is back-to-back champ

This isn’t Bell’s first time taking the top prize at the Iowa State Fair. She won the same honor last year for “The Finisher,” a loaded baked potato sold at the Rib Shack. And she’s won the award two other times over her 12 years of cooking greasy favorites at the fair.

The Rib Shack has been selling a bacon brisket mac-n-cheese dish for years. The innovation this year was putting it on bread and tossing it in a deep fryer. The inspiration for that, Bell said, was “spaghetti sandwiches” she ate as a child.

“We had to eat that, because we were poor,” she said. “So we had spaghetti sandwiches on the farm.”

When coming up with a new food, Bell said, she tries to think about what people like and uses quality ingredients. The dish uses Anderson Erickson milk and cream, generous cuts of brisket and loads of white and yellow American cheese.

“What do people like? Well, they love bacon, they love brisket, and I know everybody loves mac and cheese,” she said.

The sandwich is served with a raspberry chipotle sauce, which Bell said elevates the flavor.

The vendor has been busy throughout the fair, but Bell said she expects business to get even busier after winning the top honor. A line stretched far down the sidewalk after the award was announced Wednesday.

“We’ve been swamped the whole fair, and of course this will make it busier than normal,” Bell said. “So you have to put your mind to what’s going to happen next.”

Ashley Smith, of Ottumwa, was one of the thousands of fairgoers to enjoy the sandwich. It was the first thing she had at the fair, and she gave it a glowing review.

“It has brisket in it, it’s fried, it’s definitely filling,” she said. “I definitely could have probably ate one side and not the both of them, but it’s great, very good.”