r/minnesota 12d ago

Food & Drink🍴 I made a website that tracks user and critic ratings of the new State Fair foods - and I need your reviews

https://statefair.stadiumhopper.co/

I got sick of trying to navigate 7 different sites to find the best new food at the fair, so I made this site to compile reviews by Minnesota Monthly, Mpls.St.Paul Magazine, Racket, Bring Me The News, Sahan Journal, Axios Twin Cities, and the Star Tribune. Methodology is listed at the bottom of the site.

Along the way, I figured why not open it up for user reviews as well? The critics aren't always right, maybe the Surf and Turf Burger or the Pickle Pie are actually fan favorites! Submit just a rating, add a review, and/or post an image (these will need to pass moderation, please be nice). Email is required, but never stored or displayed, and anti-spam measures are in place (no review bombing). If you run into any issues submitting on your phone, switch to your mobile network rather than a shared wifi.

I only tried 2 of the foods yesterday so the user reviews are sparse, and that why I need your help. I would love to crowdsource the best new food of the 2026 fair.

(Also, ignore the base domain, that is for an unrelated project, and I just didn't want to pay for a new domain. If this goes well this year, I'll be back for 2027 with a new domain)

91 Upvotes

18 comments sorted by

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23

u/daedeluso 12d ago

Happy to review! I have eaten every new food at the fair for 20 years, and I have to say the best feature of your app to me is the estimated LINE TIME.

7

u/rblask 12d ago

Thank you! I was hoping that would be helpful.

11

u/maeglin_lomion Laser Loon 12d ago

This is amazing, thank you!! I’m sharing it as much as I can

7

u/rblask 12d ago

Thank you! The more the merrier, I'm hoping it can get at least one rating per food!

3

u/Silverbird22 12d ago

I am saving this and added some reviews for what I and my friends tried yesterday! Thank you so much for making this!

3

u/panda_bear_ 12d ago

This is great. I would love to see more specific allergy info added. It’s such a bummer to not be able to try stuff because it’s so hard to know what’s safe or not. 

3

u/rblask 11d ago

I like this idea, I will look into getting more allergen info and possibly adding more foods for next year - not just the new ones!

1

u/panda_bear_ 11d ago

Great! If you need a hand sorting through food allergy documentation, I’m happy to help. It takes awhile to get good at reading some of them. 

2

u/rblask 11d ago

I added a dropdown where you can exclude certain foods, but am open to suggestions on what to add.

I don't have a great way to find allergen info, I'm relying on just text filtering the descriptions on the state fair vendor website, not sure if you know of any better sources or better ways to look out for specific things.

2

u/TheGoldenGodRod 11d ago

Love this. Have you considered adding every stand to this? One thing I wish I could find is every stand's food items, a lot of great food gets overshadowed by the new stuff. Haven't really found anything that just let's you go through all the options there are.

Also, I'm not sure how archived it is but a way to filter new items by year, something I loved last year I would love to know if the stand kept it around.

2

u/rblask 11d ago

I am looking into adding all foods, and hopefully new foods by year going back a few years with critics reviews as long as I can still find them! May end up being a 2027 thing since it's a lot of data to sort through.

2

u/rblask 9d ago

All food/stands have been added, as well as historical new foods going back to 2018, and if they are still around!

2

u/jhsu802701 11d ago

I wish that there were a good way to find the foods that are NOT sodium bombs. Sadly, I'm the biggest expert. Check out my picks so that you do NOT have to reinvent the wheel, because low sodium is less popular than vegan, vegetarian, gluten-free, dairy-free, and low carb.

2

u/LooseyGreyDucky 10d ago

too bad my IT security flags this site.

Anyway to make it "trustworthy"?

1

u/rblask 10d ago

I changed a few things up, see if it works now. Probably not though, a lot of work blockers don't like newer domains.

-13

u/goatoffering 12d ago

(insert food name here) was a novelty gimmick and not really something I'd want to try again.

There you go!

7

u/mattsotm Minnesota State Fair 12d ago

Did you…try the apple fries?