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Fair food (without the fair)

4 mins read
Pam Taylor outside King & Queen French Fries in the Farmington Fairgrounds.

FARMINGTON – With fairs across the state cancelled this year, vendors and other carnival workers have been hit hard economically. King and Queen Fries is a popular vendor at the Maine fairs and has been serving fair-goers since 1952. Owner Pam Taylor knew she had to take action when the news hit that there would be no fairs.

“Most of our income comes from the fair season. We had a mortgage to pay and I knew that I just had to do something,” said Taylor, as her husband served up a dish of heaping fries to a waiting customer.

Taylor has been the official owner since 1992 and helped her parents run the business from the time she was 11. She began by reaching out to Blue Hill Fairgrounds, where they were interested in highlighting a vendor every weekend to give people the fair food that they would normally indulge in at the annual fairs. After Blue Hill went so successfully for King and Queen Fries, Taylor reached out to Farmington and Presque Isle, those being the other two most “loyal and welcoming” fairgrounds in the business’ season. Both fairgrounds were thrilled to invite King and Queen Fries to set up shop for a few weekends. They’ve been coming to the fairs for so long that King and Queen Fries has cultivated a lasting relationship with the fair community here.

“They roll out the red carpet for us,” said Taylor, or as others in the carnival community call her: “Princess Pam.”

According to Taylor, the turnout has been great, which came as no surprise since the establishment has a long-running reputation for being a favorite at the fair. In Presque Isle, there is a known crowd of people that wait at the gates until 9 p.m. when a ticket isn’t required for entry. They’re typically of an older generation that grew up coming to the fairs and eating none other than King and Queen Fries. Though they don’t board the tilt-a-whirl anymore, they still come every year for what Taylor calls “the best fries in the world.”

“And I say that because a man once came and tried our French fries and he was from Belgium, where the French fry was invented, and he said that our fries were ‘just a hair better’ than those in Belgium,” Taylor said.

As a custom she adopted from her father, Taylor doesn’t leave a tip jar out, but that hasn’t stopped grateful customers from leaving generous tips.

“The customers are so loyal. People wait all year for their French fry fix!” said Taylor.

According to Rupert Pratt of the Farmington Fairgrounds, people wait all year for their sausage and blooming onion fix as well. He personally asked Dana Levasseur, owner of Mr. and Mrs. Sausage to set up shop for two weekends at the Farmington Fairgrounds. Levasseur, who has owned the sausage stand since 1998, but has been in the carnival business since he was 17, has also had a good turnout in this second week of the impromptu fair dining event.

Both vendors will be serving at the Farmington Fairgrounds for the rest of the weekend from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m., takeout only.

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