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Big E 2025: Best fried foods, desserts, and meals to skip
Big E 2025 food guide: From fried tacos to loaded baked potatoes, here’s what our food reporter found.
It’s that time of year again when more than 1 million New Englanders will make their annual West Springfield pilgrimage to eat fried dough, enjoy carnival rides, and take in the sights (and smells) of New England farmers’ offerings.
The Eastern States Exposition, known around these parts as The Big E, is back for its usual two weeks of state fair festivities, except this fair represents the six states that make up the New England region.
Because it showcases the bounty of six states, the Big E is huge, not just in size but in vendors.
Upon entering through Gate 5, my first Big E journey hit me with all the usual fair fare, like corn dogs, funnel cakes, and caramel apples. But the Big E, also a major agricultural exhibition, is also an opportunity for its 1.6 million visitors to try foods straight from the farm and ocean.
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To summarize, there’s a lot of food to try, and this food reporter was asked the tough task of trying around a dozen dishes in order to share my honest opinion of the Big E’s food offerings this year.
The results: I ate 17 different items. Five of those foods were fried. Three were on a stick. Two were covered in melted cheese, while another two had the description “loaded” in their title. Finding a vegetable or fruit was a challenge. Hiding underneath my sweater was the unlatched button of my jeans, as I desperately needed room to breathe after dish six.
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It’s a thankless job, but I did it so Big E visitors could make the best decisions when attending the fair, which runs daily through Sept. 28.
Best fried food
I consider it an accomplishment that the majority of the foods I ate weren’t fried, but the fried variety still counted for a significant chunk of the food consumed on Friday. The fry batter flavor can make or (most often) break a fried food at a fair, and some fell into that latter bucket for me at the Big E (looking at you, disappointing elote corn dog). Fortunately at Macho Taco, the Big E winner of best savory food in 2024, a lack of flavor or a soggy batter was not the case when I bit into the empanada taco — a cut-open empanada stuffed with ground beef and other typical taco toppings. According to the employee, this was one of the more popular items on the menu on the first day of the fair, though the deep fried chile relleno is in the annual food competition.
Best food on a stick
There was some crossover among this category and the fried food one, if you can believe it. There was that unfortunate corn dog — king of food on sticks at fairs — covered in a street corn mixture that fell off immediately as I went to take a bite of the handheld food. It won’t even get a highlight in a category it should shine in. But another fair classic, fried cheese on stick from classic Big E vendor Angela’s Pizza, was appetizing enough. And for those very online, you’ll get a satisfying cheese pull out of it, too. I wanted to give a shoutout to one of the healthier options I had, which was the simple smoked salmon on a stick from Maine Aquaculture Association at the Maine building.
Best vegetable (or fruit) dish
This category originally started as vegetable-only, but finding multiple vegetables to compare that weren’t fried proved difficult. In the end, a root vegetable covered in fruit won this round. Sassy’s Sweet Potatoes owner Mary Beth Shirzadi said she brought her concept to fairs because of her niece, a stage 4 cancer survivor who had trouble finding healthy foods at festivals. Sassy’s Tropical, topped with fruit relish and coconut flakes, was the refreshing bite needed after hours of indulgent foods. So were the cup of raspberries at the Massachusetts building.
Best dessert
The only item I took home for later was the heavenly apple cider Whoopie pie from Massachusetts building vendor Joey’s Deli & Market. There were other flavors, like mint, pumpkin, and maple bacon, but I ultimately went with apple cider after staff told me they went through multiple batches to get this flavor just right.
Line that’s worth the wait
On the first Friday of the Big E, there were surprisingly not many lines, despite my best effort to stand in at least two to write up this category. If you go on a weekend, I have a feeling you’ll see plenty of lines, but no matter what day you go, you’re likely to see people flocking to one spot in particular: the Maine potato line. I waited in a line for 8 minutes to get a loaded baked potato, the only line I had to wait longer than a minute but also not enough time to digest the handful of other dishes I had eaten that hour. Was it tasty? It was a baked potato covered in cheese and sour cream, so yes. First timers, do the line so you can say you ate the famed potato, but there’s so much other food to try that a second time in line isn’t warranted.
Best state house food
As you can already see, many of the best foods I ate weren’t at the typical carnival food stands, but rather were found along the “Avenue of States,” a row of houses dedicated to each New England state. I had my best bite of the day inside the Rhode Island building: a scallop stuffie at Blount Clam Shack. For those unacquainted with the Rhode Island stuffed quahog, it’s an oven-baked food made with a chopped clam and breadcrumb stuffing put into an emptied quahog shell. I’ve been told by seafood restaurant owners that the food is ugly but delicious, and this one — stuffed with scallops, shrimp, and clams — was definitely delectable. It was small, so I of course finished it, leaving no bay scallop to go to waste.
What to skip
If it wasn’t obvious, that elote corn dog. Get a regular corn dog and condiments instead.
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The Big E; Sept. 12-25, 2025; Tickets $21.50 adult, $13.50 child; 875 Memorial Ave., West Springfield, Mass.
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