Carnival Eats: Reality TV Done Right or I Feel Fat Knowing This Show Exists

It’s no secret that fast food in one of the worst things you can eat. Typically deep-fried in oil, most fast foods meals contain more than a daily serving of fat and sodium, and that’s if you get the small. While the recent health revolution condemns fast food, it’s really never been a secret. Anyone who thought a burger and fries were heath food would have been wiped out by Darwinism anyway. When you eat fast food, you’re making a choice. Sometimes, that choice is “I want to eat something tasty and at a fair price.” Sometimes it’s “I’ve given up on life. I’ll have another Big Mac.” We didn’t need nutritionists to tell us that fast food was crap. I mean, the stuff isn’t even biodegradable. If I wanted to eat healthy, I damn sure wouldn’t have gone to a place who’s chief salesman is a clown and his right hand man is a purple… What the Hell is Grimace anyway?

Is this what a chicken nugget looks like before its breaded?

If you want to talk about bad decisions, forget the burger and fries. Who’s eating the fast food Fish sandwiches? During Lent, when Christians typical remember there are rules involved when belonging to a Church, fast food commercials pimp out the fish sandwich like they didn’t forget about it for the previous ten months. In fact, the “fish” “patty” might be leftover from last Lent. If you live in Cleveland, where do you think this fish is coming from? I’d say there’s better odds that this so-called fish contains beef than the hamburgers. If you’ve ever eaten a Fast Food Fish Sandwich, or a triple F, please, confirm it in the comments. I want to berate you. Let’s face it, you deserve it.

Fast food defenders, typically over 300 pounds and when discussing Gyms think of The Office*,¹ will point out not everything at these restaurants are unhealthy. They will point to the premium salads being an option for the heart conscious. Not everything with lettuce is healthy for you. These salads are packed with fried meats, cheese and dressings filled with corn syrup. Most of the salads are actually worse for you than the burgers. Fast Food salads have the illusion of health, which is typically all you want, but when your size 40 pants no longer fit, that illusion is gone, typically replaced with a lot of heavy breathing and chins. Recent studies have shown that most fast food salads contained more fat than… well, Fat Bastard

I quit the Subway Diet because of the bastard Jared

Look, I’m not one to judge. If you enjoy fast food, go for it. Just don’t start crying that the companies misled you. You’re the one who chose to supersize you’re meal. You’re the one who decide to add a side cheeseburger for .99 cents. You’re the one who got the drum of diet coke and thought that made the meal healthy. Don’t blame them for having fried food.

No, fast food restaurants aren’t packed with beauty contestants, but there’s nothing wrong with the occasional stop in. The food is prepared quickly, tastes pretty good, and while it’s not gourmet, it gets he job done. You won’t feel good after eating fast food**,² but you won’t be ashamed of yourself.

When you go to a carnival, you’ll most certainly feel bad about yourself.

I’m not saying checking out a carnival is a no-no. I mean there’s rides that will make you wait an hour on-line to ride for 15 seconds. There’s also plenty of games designed to empty your wallet as there is no physical chance of you winning. I mean, yeah, carnivals are great and I don’t know how you’d miss out on such a good time,

But don’t you ever look me in the eyes and say you’ve eaten carnival food and felt good about yourself. You’d be a goddamn liar and I don’t associate with liars. Jerks? Sure. Assholes? All the time. But liars? Never. I have morals.

I have at least one moral.

Carnivals are like the extreme version of the fast food restaurant. It’s like straight out of the 90s where everything was turned up and in your face. Carnivals could care less about your physical well-being when you buy their food. All they care about is collecting your money and moving on to the next mark. The phrase “A fool and their money are soon parted” could easy be updated to “A carnival attendee and his last 14 dollars will be spent on the fried bacon in butter sauce” and it would have the same meaning. Sure, the concept sounds good, but you’ll put on a spare tire just by inhaling the fumes. In fact, a spare tire might actually be on the menu.

Carnivals fry everything, and it seems to be a huge game of trying to top one another. If the food exists, they will fry it. I remember years ago seeing fried Oreos for the first time. That seemed aggressive. I mean, an Oreo isn’t exactly great for you, but then they decide to bread it and deep fry it? Despite my reservations, people love these things. Honestly, they don’t even taste like Oreos. They taste like fried bits. But hey, the formula worked, and now more things are fried then every before. You want to eat fried pizza? Go to a carnival and get your rocks off, figuratively speaking***³. Hell, I’ve seen advertisements for fried butter. No really.

Thank God I can watch down my friend butter with some deep fried Pepsi

How do you fry butter? Wouldn’t it just become liquid butter in oil?

Who are the people eating this slop? My theory is the fast food junkies. After a while, fried chicken, fries, and whatever is in that fish sandwich doesn’t satisfy their fix. These people must go to carnivals to quench their greasy craving. The carnival folks realize they are addicts, and continue to push new products on them, further enslaving them into a fattening, artery clogging nightmare. Truly, this should be illegal.

If the above sounds like a drug addict, that’s because it is. Did you know in 2017, licensed Doctor Mantis Tobaggon MD****⁴ completed a study stating that carnival food was worse from the body than heroin. Does this mean we should all be doing heroin? I mean, probably not, but we definitely shouldn’t be eating carnival food.

Seriously, how do they fry butter?

The Cooking Channel, a channel seemingly about teaching viewers how to cook, revolves their programming around pretend chefs or celebrities going to places where food is sold and eating there for free. It’s an incredibly sweet gig. Knowing America’s penchant for gluttony, they decided to create a show in 2013 called Carnival Eats – a program that, you guessed it, focusing on eating carnival food. The show covers two different carnivals each episode, picking out the most unique offering the fair has. Pushing the carnival agenda… Where’s the FDA when we need them?

“And then we’ll put the meth in the oil. We can cook out in the open”

Let me tell you – Carnival Eats might be the best program on TV. No, it’s not trying to compete with Breaking Bad, Mad Men, or Game of Thrones. Instead, it just shows one man eating a variety of painfully fattening food. It takes a special man to keep me entertained while people eat a variety of bacon wrapped heart attacks. That man Noah Cappe

He doesn’t have the Carnie build, does he?

Cappe credentials are surprising, but they fit. He’s never been a chef at any point in his life, though I’m sure he’s made a grilled cheese or something once in the life. That qualifies for a host on the Cooking Channel. He’s currently the host of the Canadian version of Bachelor, giving him experience in dealing with feral humans who are deeply addicted to something bad for them. Whether it’s fried food or fame, the addiction is real. Noah Cappe has also been on the Hallmark channel, so he has experience dealing with stiff, lifeless people. It’s as if he was born for this role.

Cappe’s charm comes from his awful puns. I’m pretty sure he spends hours trying to come up with good lines in response. Usually, it involves feeding himself. Probably his best line was when he told a “cook” that he was into fitness… fitting this whole thing in his mouth. The cook was confused, probably because he’s never heard the word fitness in this life. Cappe oozes charisma and charm, but truthfully, that might be because everyone he shares screen time with oozes nothing but grease. Cappe might be entertaining by default, but it sure works.

The host also stands out because he is also dressed preppy. Typically he’ll have some colored shirt, be it polo or a button down, and khaki pants. This is compared to everyone else who wears some sort of torn t-shirt, clothes that shouldn’t be allowed on TV, or a costume. My theory is Noah wears these things to taunt the Carnival folks, mocking their ridiculous ways. I doubt he’s really a jerk though. I mean the guy’s eating a bunch of fried food so he’s probably down to earth.

The format of the show has Noah visit seven different carnival stands selling food, and let’s them show how to make their take on fried “whatever”. Before and after he visits the stand, he speaks to carnival attendees asking about why they chose the dish. Many of these responses are in half English, half growls. Most of the people chosen struggle to complete a full sentence, usually saying things like “food is good.” Or “I like sauce”.

Typically, there are four people chosen – three of which are absolute disasters who have no idea where they are or what a camera is. There’s a chance they are in a fried food coma and can’t recognize obvious things. Or, there’s a chance they’re carnies. I know which one I think it is. The fourth person included is almost always an attractive woman who has no business being at the fair. I assume this is done for the male demographic, and possibly for Cappe himself. These women are clearly cast by the Cooking Network and flown in for their 14 seconds of screen time. They are isolated from the carnie folks, film their segment after taking a bite of the fried slop, and then likely are fed their preferred vegan diet of bark and kale chips.

In the history of these scenes, we’ve seen a clown who was super excited to eat poutine. We’ve seen a cowboy brag that he gets to eat beans. There’s even been a Shakespeare costume fair where the attendees spoke in old English, while they ate fried oysters that were out in the sun way too long. Is this what people do for fun? I thank them. Without their sacrifice, this blog would never be possible.

Of course, the heart of the show is the food they create. I truly could not do it justice without describing my favorite segments. They are quite amazing. These aren’t the only standout scenes, but I think they give a taste of what you’re in store for it you haven’t seen the show.

A man who looked shockingly like Mark Davis, including the haircut, make Peanut Butter and Jelly Ice Cream.

• When asked what the special ingredient was, he exclaimed “butter fat!” like he just won a million dollar lottery prize. In the creation of his ice cream, fake Mark Davis included “high end” peanut butter, which was a poorly blurred out Skippy’s. He then proceeded to add a loaf of bread into the ice cream concoction saying that bread is essential to a PB & J. That’s what people crave in their ice cream – bread. Who was rushing to this guy’s stand? I guess the people who needed to watch don their butter fat.
• In the Shakespeare cosplay episode, Noah visited a man in a kilt who was making a Scotch egg. A Scotch egg, apparently a thing, is an Egg wrapped in ground sausage and then deep-fried. When Noah asked what the guy was planning to make, he shouted “egg!” like Frank Reynolds trying to offer you one in these trying times. While the egg as frying, Noah said he thinks he’ll like it. The “chef” pulled out a knife and put it on the table close to Noah and said “Oh, you’re going to like it”. Pretty sure that was the first murder threat on the Cooking Channel. Cappe must have felt back at home on the set of a Hallmark movie. He then smothered his egg with store-bought BBQ sauce, pretended it was home made. Did I mention said man was wearing a kilt this whole time? Glorious.
• Keeping with the celebrity theme, Noah visited Fake Louis CK. This man was a balder, fatter version of the disgraced comedian, except he wasn’t interesting or funny. We hope he also kept his hands above the waist, but Cappe looked a bit uncomfortable filming this scene. Fake LCK made a Sloppy Joe Donut Sandwich. It featured store brought raspberry donuts, canned Sloppy Joe Mix and ground beef that the “cook” may have made, although it wasn’t shown. Noah said it was one of the best donut sandwiches he ever ate. This was in the pilot episode. He would go on to eat many more. So, so many more.
• In a Jersey Based episode, the “cook” prepared fried dough balls because he dropped out of culinary school in the first week. To differentiate his fried balls of dough, the “cook” filled the batter with larva. That’s right, bugs. Why didn’t he use literally anything else? His reasoning was actually pretty sound. He stated that you couldn’t taste the bugs in the batter. That’s a great plan. I mean, the customers probably wouldn’t be able to taste poison either, so why not add that in too? Oh wait, he already did when he pushed larva on his customers. How the hell wasn’t this man arrested for his crimes against humanity? This episode portrayed Jersey in a great light. All that was missing was Snooki and the Situation, although they were way smarter than our dough man.
• In season four, one women decide to make a fried salad. Noah played this all hilariously by pretending not to know how to pronounce the word salad, while the “cook” didn’t laugh or even smile. She likely didn’t know they were filming a TV show. The woman’s idea of salad was frying onions and putting them on a bed of lettuce. So yeah, she basically made onion rings and tried to pass it off as a salad. This is 1000 times better than eating dough wrapped bugs.
• In the same episode as the fried salad, a man purchased store made chili, and put in a pot to pass it off as its own. Then he dumped the chili into a Frito’s bag. Now, these were the snack size Frito’s bags, so you’re taking about a half of teaspoon of chili. That was it. He didn’t do anything else but spoon chili into a bag. They didn’t pretend to show him cooking the chili. Somehow, this segment lasted six minutes. It was unbelievable.
• A “baker” with no regard for calories once purchased a cheesecake, and then pretended it was made in-house. After stumbling over the ingredients of a cheese cake, she then sliced it, struggling repeatedly. Afterwards, she froze the cheesecake, which allowed her to coat it in chocolate and then put fresh bacon on it. By fresh bacon, this was most definitely bacon bits. I’m not sure how this dish is FDA approved. Noah Cappe cited the sweet and salty combination of the cake and the bacon. I too, often thing that my slice of cake could use some greasy, salty bacon. It’s like Tuna Fish and Lamb, a winning combination.
• Another innovative dessert was when a man, who had clearly snuck into the stand pretending to be a cook, put his own spin on the cheesecake. After struggling to determine which was an apron is worn, the make-believe chef took a frozen piece of cheesecake and wrapped in a tortilla. This monstrosity was then deep-fried for 90 seconds and served with chocolate and strawberry sauce. Cappe said that the cheesecake oozed out of the burrito, and the crispy, creamy contrast was divine. The only way this could have been divine is if it killed him. This man made a fried cheesecake sandwich. I’m still not sure if I’m appalled or impressed.
• In one of the most blatant examples of laziness, a stoner with a chef’s hat created a dish using store-bought ingredients. First, he started with a Twinkie. Now, you can’t say copyrighted products on Carnival Eats, as they couldn’t dream of having the budget. Instead, you have to describe the ingredient that everyone knows via context clues. The Twinkie was called a cream filled snack cake. Anyway, the cake opened up and stuffed with a Snickers… err… peanut and nougat filled chocolate candy bar. This combo was held together by being wrapped in bacon, or fattening pork product. Of course, this was deep-fried. I mean, this “chef” didn’t even pretend to create something. He was better off heating up frozen chicken tenders.
• Finally, they deep-fried fruit punch. No, it wasn’t poured from the pitcher into the fryer, like I had hoped. Instead, the “chef” mixed fruit punch crystals into the dough batter. This is innovative for Carnival Eats. No, not because the inclusion of fruit punch. It was innovative that they showed the dough being made. This wasn’t store-bought! Plus, it involved more than then ingredients. Sure, it was a disgusting disaster, but still. Obviously, the dough was deep-fried and covered in powdered sugar.

The best part about Carnival eats is that they typical skip over any parts that could involve cooking skill . If there’s a situation where somebody needs to make a sauce from scratch or use a complicated cooking technique, it’s passed over. Instead they focus on butter fat, or a guy pedaling a stationary bike to make ice cream. However, there’s one recurring guest who they never skip over any of his techniques: Chicken Charley.

I have so many questions about this photo.

Regularly described as a legend, Chicken Charlie spent over 40 years in front of a firer, and lost a few screws. It became too easy to make normal dishes people wouldn’t hate. Instead of sticking with reasonable dishes, he got inventive. Like really inventive.  He even designed three exclusive dishes for Carnival Eats that deserved their own sections of the write up.

Sweet and Spicy Jalapeno Poppers – In this delectable take on a jalapeño popper, the cheese is replaced by a caramel cube. After the jalapeno is stuffed, it is wrapped in bacon before being deep-fried. When Noah Cappe ate this, he had a glob of Caramel come out, just like cheese. It was one of the grossest things I’ve ever seen.  Chicken Charley was incredibly proud of this, and Noah used some of the most generic compliments when talking about the concoction: “This bacon is a pork product”. Who likes Caramel Cubes? The answer is nobody. Not only do these three ingredients not work together, they don’t belong on the same plate.

All Chicken Taco – In a rare idea that sounded reasonable, Chicken Charley decided to make tacos. Instead of using a tortilla, the shell is actually deep-fried chicken skin. I know people love chicken skin, as well as fried food. I’m sure a lightly fried chicken skin would have been perfect. This chicken skin is fried until it hardens into a shell form and doesn’t move. Then bits of pulled chicken in BBQ sauce is added to the “taco”. This actually doesn’t seem so bad. Chicken Charlie then adds three random onions as a garnish. I assume this was to prove not everything in his stand is fried. Noah’s first bite made my heart hurt. I think Charlie shed a tear when Noah said this was best chicken skin based taco shell he had eaten that week.

Ice Cream Donut Chicken Sandwich – In an incredible turn of events, Chicken Charley invented another asinine creation. Combining store-bought donuts, store brought ice cream and a generous portion of fried chicken, the sandwich weighs in at two pounds. It is created by frying a long, full pound chicken breast for 7 minutes. Then, the donuts sandwich a half container of Stop and Shop’s finest ice cream and the chicken. It is topped with a few Fruity pebbles, cleverly disguised under the moniker fruity breakfast cereal. Finally, he topped it with maple syrup and powdered sugar. Noah Cappe focused on the fact that the sandwich contained hot and cold elements, but never confirmed it was any good. Chicken Charlie swore it was flying off the shelves. I agree. When the ice cream melts off the stacks of unsold sandwiches, it’ll create a sliding effect, literally making these fly right off the shelves to the floor, where they belong.

That’s five paragraphs on Chicken Charlie. Somebody give me my damn Pulitzer.

That’s truly the lesson I learn from Carnival Eats – effort doesn’t matter. Take shortcuts whenever you can. If you can use pre made ingredients and pretend you cooked them, go for it. Isn’t that the American Dream? Carnival Eats represents part of the American dream, typically the back fat.

Hopefully this write-up didn’t make you hungry. If it did, you may be a carnival food addict. If you or anyone you know suffers from eating everything fried, or gets the shakes at the phrase “Step right up, a winner every time” please seek help. By calling 1-800- Bloggin, our exclusive Carnie Recovery Team will come to your home with a fruit smoothie and a workout plan. You’ll be a functional member of society in 6-8 weeks, or your money back.

You’re not getting your money back. I don’t need to asterisk that.

1. *At least the first four seasons before things went downhill fast.
2. **Especially later on in the day. Roughly 12 hours after. This is a poop joke, for the record.
3. ***What you do on your own time is your business. I do not what to hear about turn ons you pervs.
4. ****At one point, the Dr Dropped a Magnun Condom out of his wallet. He appeared to have wads of hundred dollar bills. I did not want to ask where he went to medical school.