The couple who won a Big Tex Choice award for the best sweet on their first try, for the first time in State Fair of Texas history, said they are prepared for strong demand as the fair opened Friday.
Nicole Sternes and her husband Chris Easter put their restaurant, Southside Steaks and Cakes, just outside Fair Park, on hold to focus on their booth near the Cotton Bowl.
It features cheese steak sandwiches and especially the award-winning sweet “Peanut Butter Paradise.”
In the opening hours of the fair Friday, people lined up to get a bite of paradise.
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“Oh my God, there's caramel in there. I can see why it won for sure. It's really good,” said fair visitor Bryan Brickman.
He is somewhat of a fair food expert, preparing a YouTube video sampling many fair food items with help from his wife, Stephanie.
“I take a few bites of everything. He eats more of it than I do,” she said.
Bryan Brickman broke his habit of only sampling each item, finishing nearly all of the Peanut Butter Paradise.
"This is insane. I can totally see why this won," he said.
Easter grew up near Dallas Fair Park with a mom who could not afford to actually take her kids to the fair. So, hosting a booth at the fair and serving the Big Tex Award-winning sweet that he created is very exciting.
“This morning I couldn’t stop, I couldn’t stop praying and praising. I had so many tears of joy, but I was right here. I didn’t know whether to smile or cry. So, I was just doing it all, all the way till I got to the booth. So, I had to just wipe it off and put this smile on,” he said.
His Peanut Butter Paradise recipe is a honey bun, dipped in funnel cake batter, fried and then topped with peanut butter, caramel and Reese’s candy.
Assembling the ingredients for the expected 30,000 customers is a challenge.
“We were on a hunt for the honey buns. We’re still hunting for honey buns. The second hunt was for employees. So that has been the challenge to make sure we have enough staff because we don’t know what to expect,” Sternes said.
Among the first customers were the Holland family. They said the work paid off. Beth Holland, a daughter and two grandsons heard about Peanut Butter Paradise on the news after it was named a Big Tex Choice winner and they made their first fair food stop at the booth.
“We found it on the map first. And we were looking for it. We came to the fair and made a beeline over here,” Holland said.
Easter said he enjoyed watching the Holland boys fight over finishing the treat he created. He said he just knew it would be a winning entry when he first put it together.
“You can’t miss. If you have a honey bun, peanut butter, candy, it’s like the perfect blend,” he said.
And the couple said their booth and the happy customers are like a dream come true.
“People have said they treat the fair like it's like Disney Land or Disney World. We don't have Minnie or Mickey, but we have Big Tex,” Sternes said.
And this year, the fair has Peanut Butter Paradise.
Sternes said high school athletes from Madison and South Oak Cliff will also help work at the booth during the fair. She said coaches wanted the students to see the contribution that Black entrepreneurs are making to the community.
