Heritage Fair: It's All About the Food

The Dundalk Heritage Fair offers some of the best food vendors in the region, but navigating the many different sights, smells and tastes the the fair has to offer can be a tricky task.

Who serves the most the most tender pit beef sandwich? The freshest homemade sausages or the crispiest french fries? Let me guide you on your taste adventure around the Heritage Fair.

In order to get the best meal possible at the fair one must visit several different stands. My go-to meal at the many fairs my children and I attend throughout the year is the rare pit beef sandwich. A tradition born in Baltimore, pit beef is our region's answer to BBQ.

The top-round cut of beef is grilled, not smoked like Kansas City BBQ. The beef develops a dark char of bark on the outside but is juicy rare on the inside. Sliced paper-thin and heaped high on seeded rye bread – topped with horseradish and raw onions– it's heaven.

Many vendors at the Heritage Fair offer pit beef, along with pit ham and turkey, including such local names as Squire's and Minnick's. I prefer to support local businesses and can recommend either Squire's or Minnick's. Both offer authentic pit beef, cooked to your preference with all the fixings.

I ordered mine from Minnick's, simply because the line was shorter at the time, and I wasn't disappointed. The perfectly cooked beef melted in my mouth in counterpoint to the crunch of the raw white onion and the horseradish added a kick at the end. It took me back to the fairs of my childhood.

Now most parents can probably get away with hot dogs and hamburgers for their elementary school children. My wife and I are not so lucky. My seven-year old son ordered his usual, another Maryland tradition, the crabcake. The only stand selling crabcakes was Ross' Seafood, another fabulous local restaurant.

We did luck out as my daughter ordered the coddie, she has less expensive tastes than my son. The crabcake was made with all jumbo lump crabmeat, very little filler, and seasoned with Old Bay and fresh parsley. The coddie was also very tasty.

My wife Kristina had a polish sausage from Ostrowski's Famous Polish Sausage of Washington Street, not to be confused with Ostrowski's of Bank Street, just a few blocks away and a completely separate operation.The sausage, which is made on-site in their Fells Point location, tasted of sage and caraway seed, pilled high with peppers and onions.

Now most of the vendors serve french fries, but in order to get the best you have to get Nader's. They serve up a large potato that is thinly spiral-cut and deep fried, creating a mountain of salty fried potato goodness, We also ordered two ears of grilled corn on the cob, the grill marks bring out the smokey sweetness of the corn.

After our savory feast we needed something to cool us off and decided on yet another Maryland tradition, the snowball. Again, you can find snowballs at several stands at the fair, but the best by far is Stouten's. They proudly use flavors made with real sugar, not corn syrup and the shaved ice gives the treat a velvety texture that is unmatched.

Come out and enjoy all the tastes of Maryland and support local businesses by having dinner at the Dundalk Heritage Fair.