There’s a stand serving Bread Bowls filled with Mac & Cheese and Soup at the New York State Fair — in August. So to say that I was incredibly skeptical going into this is an understatement. But I gotta say, I was pleasantly surprised.
Bread Bowl Heaven is basically 30 yards from Gate 4. You walk in Gate 4, walk straight ahead for like 30 or 40 yards, and they’re right there on the right-hand side. And it is delicious.
They’re really serving two things: Bread Bowls filled with food, and Sweet Potato Fry Buckets.
The Bread Bowls are filled with either Mac & Cheese or soup. They’ve got three different soups, and I chose the Clam Chowder. This was big on clam flavor, with a good amount of potato cut into really small pieces. Creamy, hot, and comforting — exactly what you want to eat with a Bread Bowl.
I also tried their Mac & Cheese Bread Bowl, which was good too. It’s like the best Velveeta Mac & Cheese you had as a kid, and I mean that in the best possible way… It has that nostalgic, ultra-creamy, no-frills comfort food flavor.
Even though it’s called Bread Bowl Heaven, my favorite thing there wasn’t actually a bread bowl. The other option at Bread Bowl Heaven is their Sweet Potato Fry Buckets, which are really similar to Tater Tot Buckets, but with Sweet Potato Fries instead.
They have one called The Vermont, which is a bucket of Sweet Potato Fries doused in Maple Syrup with bacon pieces on top. But, my favorite was the Cloud Nine Fries.
You start with a bucket of crispy Sweet Potato fries, cover that in Marshmallow Sauce, then top the whole thing with marshmallows and bacon. It’s otherworldly.
You get the sweet, crispy Sweet Potato fries, then all of that gooey, melting marshmallow, then salty, crunchy bacon on top of it all. It’s the kind of combination that shouldn’t work on paper but somehow makes perfect sense in your mouth.
The Cloud Nine fries are definitely making my list of favorite things at The Fair this year. They were, without question, my most favorite thing I had on Day 1, and I can’t recommend them enough.
So yeah, I went to Bread Bowl Heaven skeptical about eating Clam Chowder at the State Fair in August. Then, somehow I left thinking about Sweet Potato fries covered in marshmallows and bacon.
That’s The Fair for you.
