A list of all the food vendors at May's Minnesota State Fair kickoff event
The State Fair's now-annual "Kickoff to Summer at the Fair" event will take place at the State Fairgrounds Thursday through Sunday, May 22-25.
The event will feature around 40 State Fair food and drink vendors, free entertainment, and a wide array of shopping exhibits and booths.
Tickets are $13 in advance. The fair is also selling a ticket bundle where you get a free 2025 State Fair admission with the purchase of four Kickoff to Summer tickets for Thursday or Friday.
Here's a look at all the vendors who will be plying their trade at the kickoff event.
Al's Subs & Malt Shop
Andy's Grille
Auntie M's Gluten Free
Baba's
Ball Park Cafe
Bayou Bob's
Beverages by Giggles' (two locations)
Big Fat Bacon
Cafe Caribe
Cheese On-A-Stick and Fresh Squeezed Lemonade
Chimborazo
Coasters
Dino's Gyros
Duke's Poutine
El Burrito Mercado (new this year)
El Sol Mexican Foods
Fresh French Fries
Hansen's Foot Long Hot Dogs & Corn Dogs
Jersey Jo's (new this year)
LuLu's Public House (new this year)
Minneapple Pie (new this year)
Minnesnowii Shave Ice
Mouth Trap Cheese Curds
Nelson's Foot Long Hot Dogs & Corn Dogs
The Perfect Pickle
Pronto Pups (two locations)
Que Viet Concessions
RC's BBQ
Richie's Cheese Curd Tacos
Rick's Pizza
Sambusa Express
Summer Lakes Beverage
Sweet Martha's Cookie Jar
Sweets & Treats
Tiny Tim Donuts
Tot Boss, Trickster Tacos
West Indies Soul Food
Click here for menus from each vendor.
(Times and dates vary)
ABBASolutely Fab - Tribute Band
Doug Otto and The Getaways
Selby Avenue Brass Band
Dance and Entertainment Studios
GB Leighton
The de'Lindas
Duniya Drum & Dance
Zumba Fitness
The Rockin' Hollywoods
The 70's Magic Sunshine Band
South Asian Arts & Theater House
Colombia Live
O'Shea Irish Dance
Miss Shannon's Sock Hop
Innocent
Dirty Shorts Brass Band
Twin Cities Trapeze
Mexica Yolotl
Daybreak Collective
The Art of Dance Studio.
3rd Lair SkatePark & SkateShop
Airbrushed Caricatures
Always Northern Permanent Jewelry
Angry Minnow Vintage; Crystal Visions
Cultural Destinations (new this year)
Every Third Saturday
Gifts Made by Hand
Glitter Glamper
Good Things
Gotta Go Gotta Throw
Hagen and Oats
Hands-Only CPR tent
Human Touch
Invisible Wounds Project
JonnyPops (May 24 only)
Kelly's Candles (new this year)
Linh T Vo Art and Illustration (new this year)
Mattress Firm
Minnesota Assistance Council for Veterans
Minnesota Rusco
Minnesota Star Tribune
Must be Ruff
Namaste Boutique (new this year)
Nikkolette's Macarons (new this year)
Northern Pine Co Boutique
Origami by Kannika (new this year)
Paddle North
Plow World Power Equipment (new this year)
Rainbow Midwest
Re-Bath
Renewal by Andersen
Roots, Shoots & Leaves
Ruby's Pebble Art (new this year)
Set Adrift Art (new this year)
Sota Clothing
State FairWear
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Seldom do I feel more like a Hoosier than when I'm at the State Fair, the only place I know of where you can eat deep-fried cheesecake and marvel at a pig roughly the size of a Toyota Yaris, all while a jazz-funk rendition of Für Elise blares over the speaker system. With the Fair in town through Aug. 17, I've started seeing Hoosier DNA where I least expect it. Take a close look and you'll even find it in: After days of subsisting largely on battered pork and dairy, I was grateful for the gastrointestinal reprieve of a bowl of mapo tofu ($13.95) from Tian Fu Chinese Food and Japanese Sushi on the far east side. More: We tried 12 wild Indiana State Fair dishes and ranked them from worst to best Mapo tofu is a popular, relatively new Chinese dish comprised of great wobbling tofu cubes in a thick broth flavored with fermented beans and chili paste. The throat-scratching stew also traditionally includes a small amount of minced beef. Most historians trace the invention of mapo tofu to the late 1800s at Chen Mapo restaurant in the Sichuan Province's capital city of Chengdu. Per popular legend, the dish was named for one of the restaurant's owners, Mrs. Chen, whom locals affectionately called mapo due to her smallpox-scarred face (ma comes from the Chinese word for pockmarks; po comes from a word meaning elderly woman or grandmother). While not exactly my idea of a pet name, 'mapo' stuck, and Chen Mapo Tofu has served diners in Chengdu for more than a century. At Tian Fu, Chen's namesake delicacy arrived at my table via a roving four-foot-tall delivery robot with cat ears and an LCD 'face' that smiled when I pet the machine at my server's behest, a kind of cute, yet off-putting twist to the dining experience that I simply don't have the word count to fully unpack here. Most importantly, the mapo was excellent. The stew features a savory garlic-spiked broth and crimson Sichuan peppercorns that speckle the tofu like little sparks of fire. The spice level isn't quite málà ('numbing hot' in Mandarin) but might give your tear ducts some exercise nonetheless. Celery and scallions bring a little crunch, the ground beef adds a nice meaty chew and the tofu provides the nutritional bulk of the meal. For the noninitiated, tofu is made by thickening and straining soy milk into jiggling protein-rich blocks of bean curd. It isn't especially pretty and it doesn't taste like much when plain, but tofu has long been a dietary staple in China. All that tofu requires an enormous soybean supply. That's where Indiana and other Midwest states with fertile, government-subsidized farmland enter the picture. Previously in INdulge: These ridiculously hot wings are (sort of) the best thing I ate in Indy this week The Hoosier State is one of the United States' biggest soybean producers, harvesting more than 9 million tons and exporting more than $2 billion worth in 2023, according to National Agricultural Statistics Service data. In the last five years China on average has purchased roughly one quarter of the United States' soybean yield to make oil and livestock feed while dedicating its own soybeans to culinary purposes (likewise, most tofu eaten in the States is made with American-grown soybeans). Imports of American soybeans in China are down a tick this year because, well — I don't know if you've heard of this thing called a trade war, but we're sort of in one. Chinese soybean processors haven't purchased American soybeans since January before the start of President Donald Trump's second term, which has seen a back-and-forth of retaliatory tariffs between the two nations. In April, Chinese tariffs on American soybeans briefly peaked at 115%. Regardless of how compelling you find Trump's reasons for initiating the trade dispute, China backing out of the American bean business has left American soybean farmers, many of them Hoosiers, facing considerable economic uncertainty. To avoid overstepping the expertise I gleaned from one semester of pandemic-era Zoom microeconomics in college, I'll refocus on the culinary component of our state's most lucrative legume. Tofu certainly isn't everyone's thing, but as a nutritionally complete flavor sponge, it's tough to beat. Tian Fu's mapo tofu is an expertly seasoned gutful of Sichuan tradition that you certainly don't need an extensive knowledge of geopolitics to appreciate; speaking purely for myself, I find matters of the soybean much easier to digest in a big spicy stew than in trade talks. What: Mapo tofu, $13.95 Where: Tian Fu Chinese Food and Japanese Sushi, 7525 E. Washington St., (317) 520-8888 and Tian Fu Asian Bistro, 3508 W. 86th St., (317) 872-6888, In case that's not your thing: Tian Fu's east side and northwest side locations offer a variety of traditional Chinese and Japanese dishes, plus plenty of familiar Chinese American favorites. House soups ($3 to $8), pot stickers and dumplings (around $6 each) precede stir fries, noodle dishes and traditional Sichuan dishes including hot boiled fish and smoked duck ($12 to $19). For dessert, diners can cool off with red bean or green tea ice cream ($4 to $5).
