Here Are All the Wonderful/Horrifying Things I Ate At the MD Ren Faire
The Maryland Renaissance Festival, aka The World Series of Cleavage, features a lot of weird things (its clientele typically chief among them), but it’s possible that nothing there is more bizarre than the food. Last weekend, I set out to eat these experiments in gastronomic mad science, because I am just that committed to comedy/taking vengeance against my digestive tract.
It’s worth noting that I didn’t eat everything below by myself, although that should be fairly evident by the fact that I’m sitting here typing this rather than spending time in an ICU. Both my girlfriend and a friend of ours joined me for this misadventure, and we split most of the items below between us.
Also lending sympathetic (no) texts were Jezebel’s own Isha Aran, Mark Shrayber, and Tracy Moore, all of whom reacted to everything I was shoving in my face without once urging me to seek medical attention. I actually appreciate that, because I too consider comedy to take primacy over my own physical well-being.
Turkey Leg
The classic Renaissance Festival turkey leg may look like an infected scab on the outside and a biology textbook muscle map on the inside, and it may photograph about as well as a dumpster fire, but there’s something incredibly compelling about it. This is doubly confusing when you consider that 90% of all turkey legs are thrown away half-eaten because fighting through to get to the meat is basically the shitty eating version of summiting Everest.
Tracy: That turkey leg is the profile of a very sad dog who looks like Elvis.
Isha: It looks like a frog if the frog was a burn victim.
Mark: That turkey leg has Ebola. It looks like a rhinoceros penis with Ebola.
Tracy: I showed my four-year-old that turkey leg. “It looks like somebody touching blood on a bone.”
Verdict: The classic turkey leg has no earthly right to be as delicious as it is, yet here we are. Every year I think “maybe I won’t get one of those this time,” and every year I wind up going “NOPE, GET THAT FUCKER IN MY FACEHOLE.”
Chocolate-Covered Cheesecake on a Stick
I expected this to be just a nominally cheesecake-flavored ice cream bar, but no, this was an actual wedge of cheesecake, complete with crust and everything, coated in chocolate. If nothing else, I have to commend their commitment to not half-assing it — they straight up dunked a cheesecake in a metric ton of chocolate. There’s something noble about that (no, there isn’t).
Tracy: Torpedo poop.
Isha: No thank you. I can only handle two of those three gimmicks at a time.
Tracy: Four-year-old: “It looks like a popsicle that has blood on it.” I think my kid is messed-up a little.
Mark: I would absolutely eat that. I would deep-throat the shit out of that cheesecake. I imagine heaven is just Bea Arthur, Rue McLanahan, and Sophia Petrillo just deepthroating frozen cheesecake.
Verdict: Better than I had expected. I mean, still weird, cloying, and a little bit terrifying, but better than I expected.
Crab Pretzel
If you’ve never had a crab pretzel (possibly because you live in some unfortunate place where “crab” is considered an exotic foodstuff), it’s basically just a soft pretzel with crab, cream cheese, and cheddar cheese lumped on top of it. If you’re in Maryland when you eat one, I’m reasonably sure you are legally required to dump so much old bay on it that you practically asphyxiate with each bite, so thanks to my girlfriend for helpfully complying with the law here. Trufax: we were home three days and we ate two of these things, because that’s what you do when you go to Maryland. I feel like if the various States were Game of Thrones Houses, Maryland’s banner would just be a picture of one of these and the words “None More Maryland.”
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
