Buffy Meyer combined cheese in a large stand mixer in a food truck at the fairgrounds in Palmer. The blend will be stuffed into umiak, or, what Meyer calls an “Alaskan jalapeno popper.”
“It’s half a jalapeno blanched, stuffed with the three cheese blend, wrapped with a thin filet of seasoned salmon, about a quarter pound of seasoned salmon on that, then the bacon, and grilling it, so it’s a lot of prep,” Meyer said.
Meyer owns Fish On! Camp Grill with her husband, Brady Hayden. It’s their 11th year operating at the Alaska State Fair, and they’re busy preparing local food to sell to thousands of Alaskans when the fair opens in just a few days.
For the couple, the fair is a massive business opportunity.
Meyer is Inupiaq and the businesses menu features Alaska Native inspired dishes like grilled king crab legs, salmon bratwurst and cheesecake stuffed fry bread. The couple sources seafood from Rollman Family Fisheries and Norton Sound Seafood Products.
During the fair, Meyer and Hayden estimate they’ll sell so much food that they’ll earn at least half of their annual revenue. It used to be a higher percentage before they started doing more catering and other events.
“The fair was pretty much the majority,” Meyer said. “The fair was probably 80%,” Hayden added. “This year so far, it might be about 50-50,” said Meyer.
It’s a similar story for other businesses. Alaska State Fair CEO Jeff Curtis said many booths make a “significant chunk” of their annual revenue during the event.
He said most of the 75 food vendors, like Fish On!, don’t have a storefront. They’re fair-exclusive, and people come back each year to eat at the stands again.
He said fair organizers aim to provide a diverse culinary landscape.
“We want these vendors to be successful, and don’t want them to compete amongst each other too much, that they offer something unique, and that’s good for the fair goer and good for the vendor,” Curtis said.
Curtis said there’s an extensive list of food vendors vying for a spot at the fair.
Meyer claimed her spot about a decade ago. She said she heard the fair was interested in opening a salmon bake booth. She put in a proposal, and was chosen.
Hayden built the booth space, by The Gathering Place. He said he commonly hears about people who come to the fair specifically for their food. Last year, he said they served over 25,000 customers, and he thinks it’ll be even busier this year.
With all that demand, he said, it’s important to stay focused.
“You can’t let it eat you up in this stress, because if you let the stress get you, then everything starts going wrong. So you just gotta focus. I just gotta focus on my grill, grilling fish, grilling this, finishing that, and don’t look at the line and just go as fast as you can,” said Hayden.
To keep prices down, Meyer and Hayden buy salmon whole and process it themselves. Meyer estimates she goes through 5 thousand pounds of fish during the fair.
“The salmon, it’s fresh, straight from the fisherman, and we get those the day they catch it, and filet them all, take out all the pin bones,” Meyer said. “It is definitely a long labor of love.”
Outside the food truck, their nieces are seasoning salmon filets and rolling them into umiaks. And later, Meyer will start making a variety of sauces, including their pineapple rhubarb habanero mustard that tops their salmon bratwurst.
Then, of course, there’s the fry bread. The couple says their mornings start early during the fair.
“I get the yeast rising, that’s for the fry bread. We do start activating yeast early in the morning and then getting the fry bread dough starting to rise,” Meyer said.
Hayden said the best part of the fair is introducing their food to those visiting Alaska.
“We’re just very blessed on what Fish On! Camp Grill has become. It’s our responsibility to keep it in the stature that it is,” said Hayden.
Beyond the fair, Hayden and Meyer are working to get their seafood chowder, salmon bratwurst and spice blend wholesale, and expect them to be on grocery store shelves by August 2025. The fair runs through Sept. 2.
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