Food for Thought
By: Ruth Nicolaus
Helena’s Last Chance Stampede to offer mouth-watering variety of fair food
Debbie Gammon is about to take a bite out of an elephant ear. Her booth, Funnel of Love, serves the ears as well as other deep-fried delicious treats. Photo courtesy Gammon.
Helena, Mont. – The Last Chance Stampede & Fair is no place to start your diet.
With all the tempting fair foods and delicacies that the Stampede in Helena has to offer, there’s no end to the good foods to eat.
The normal fair food is available, like lemonade, cotton candy, burgers and hot dogs.
But the Stampede offers a lot more variety. From corn on the cob, to lemondairies, sweet and sour chicken and acai bowls, there’s something for everyone in Helena during the fair.
One of the regulars at the Stampede is a long-time favorite Helena restaurant.
Bullman’s Pizza has served their style of pizza at the Stampede for the last decade, says Mike Hampton, co-owner of the restaurant, which has locations in Helena and Billings.
The pizzas at the Stampede are the same quality customers enjoy at the store, he said, “wood fired, with sauces we make from scratch at the store, our own private recipe.”
The pizzas are baked in the Bullman’s trailer at the Fairgrounds, in a 650-degree oven over cured hard wood. It takes about two and a half minutes to bake a pizza, and the hot oven makes for a hot working environment. Hampton said over just two of the four days of the Stampede, about 800 pizzas will be sold.
The trailer at the Fairgrounds offers two specialty pizzas: a feta spinach and pine nut with a garlic oil base, and a barbecue chicken pizza with a barbecue sauce base.
The Stampede is the only fair at which the Bullman’s offer their pizza.
No fair is complete without funnel cakes, and Funnel of Love vendor Debbie Gammon offers more than that.
She started her concessions years ago with funnel cakes, but branched to all things deep-fried. “I read online that someone tried a deep-fried Mars bar,” she said, “and I tried it, and it was so good we just kept experimenting.”
Deep-fried Oreos are just one of the many treats at the Last Chance Stampede. Courtesy photo.
The deep-fried delicacies at Gammon’s booth include deep fried cheese, pickles, Nutter Butters, butter (encased in dough before being fried), cookie dough, and candy bars like Twix, Reese’s and Milky Way.
She also deep fries Twinkies, Zingers, bananas, peaches, Pop Tarts, and strawberry shortcake rolls “which are heavenly,” she says. “Everything gets dipped in batter and thrown in the fryer.”
Two of her deep-fried items are unique to the fair food world: s’mores and strawberries. She believes she’s the only concession stand who offers them.
Gammon also makes elephant ears, a deep-fried dough brushed with melted butter, then sprinkled with cinnamon sugar and tasting like cinnamon toast. She eats those for breakfast when she’s working the Stampede.
Another distinctive fair food at the Stampede is roasted corn at the Corn Shack.
The Corn Shack offers roasted ears of corn with a variety of seasonings. Courtesy photo.
Owned and operated by Aaron and Twyla Hauzer, the couple shucks the corn on site, roasts it, dips it in butter, then hands it to the customer to add spices and seasoning.
Everything from salty to savory is available for seasoning the corn. “We have Mexican spices, garlic, lime pepper, mayonnaise, parmesan cheese,” and more, Aaron said. “We let customers create their own masterpieces.”
The Stampede isn’t complete without ice cream, and Adobe Flats Ice Cream is the place to get the cool treat.
Run by the Hauzers, Adobe Flats’ ice cream is non-dairy, which makes it edible for people with lactose intolerance. The booth offers ice cream cones, shakes, malts, and sundaes with a variety of flavors: strawberry, caramel, butter pecan, cotton candy, chocolate, and butterscotch.
“It’s basically a rolling ice cream parlor,” Aaron said.
Steak sandwiches, served by the Capital High Cheerleading Team, is a fundraiser for the group and a long-time favorite at the Stampede. Courtesy photo.
Other foods will be available at the Stampede, including steak sandwiches, mini donuts, kettle corn, shaved ice, and more.
This year’s Last Chance Stampede & Fair runs July 27-30. The Night Show, featuring Jimmie Allen and Randy Houser, is July 27, followed by three nights of pro rodeo.
Tickets for the Night Show and rodeo are available online at LCCFairgrounds.com. Night Show tickets are $60 in advance ($70 on July 26-27). Tickets for the rodeo range in price from $20-$25.
For more information, visit the website or call the Lewis & Clark Co. Fairgrounds at 406.457.8516.