Foodie 411: Favorite fair foods, award-winning schmear and a Michelin update

DallasNews.com/food writer Sarah Blaskovich joins NBC 5 this week for another edition of Foodie 411 with her favorite State Fair of Texas foods, a North Texas bagel shop with award-winning schmear and an update on when Michelin will release its Texas Guide.

Last week we mentioned The Dallas Morning News would be sampling foods at the State Fair of Texas, now we can tell you our favorites.

Our favorite dish came from Palmer's Hot Chicken, an East Dallas restaurant with a stand at the State Fair of Texas. The dish is Hot Chick-in-Pancake Poppers, and it's made by mixing shredded Nashville hot chicken with pimento cheese, then dipping it in pancake batter and deep frying it. It was spicy and sweet and cheesy and delicious.

We also loved the Drowning Taquitos, which are a trio of chicken taquitos served in a cup with guacamole, sour cream, salsa and more. You'd think they would get soggy with all that stuff in there, but they didn't. I tasted these dishes with 8 other journalists, and we all agreed that these were easy to walk with, generous in size and filling enough for a whole meal.

The Scene

Use this map to find all 10 Big Tex Choice Awards finalists.

Starship Bagel , a small business with shops in Lewisville, downtown Dallas and Far North Dallas, won a very big award. Its cream cheese, or schmear, was picked as the best in the country at an event called New York BagelFest. I could survive on bagels and cream cheese alone, so this is happy news to a bagel lover like me.

We learned this week that Michelin will release its Texas Guide on November 11. This guide will list Michelin's favorite restaurants, both fancy and not, across the state. Michelin critics have never reviewed restaurants in Texas, so this inaugural guide is a very big deal. Those who love food should circle Nov. 11 in red marker on their calendars.