This year, Stampede featured some pretty wacky new foods, but none were quite as strange as Crocodile Sliders. Yes, made with REAL crocodile. I decided to venture off the path of traditional fair food and give them a shot. After all was said and done, I must say, I was rather disappointed.
First of all, I was pretty disappointed with the portion sizes. I got three sliders that were average size, but the crocodile patties were about the size of a silver dollar and about a half-inch thick. They also did not come dressed in any way, but there was a table outside the stand with tomatoes, lettuce, cheese, ketchup and mustard, if I recall correctly. The sliders came with a small helping of chips as well, but I can’t say that they made up for the small food to price ratio. For the $12 I spent, I really would have liked to get more, especially in the meat portion. On a side note, a bottle of Coke at the same place was $3.50, which is completely
overpriced.
The service was pretty good. I wasn’t left waiting for very long, taking into consideration the crowd that the stand was experiencing at the time and they were quite friendly. No complaints here.
The taste wasn’t anything spectacular, to be honest. I was expecting more. The meat was rather dry, thick and tough, but luckily, didn’t taste abnormal by any standard. It was rather like something between chicken and pork. As a whole, the crocodile sliders were rather bland, but at least you get to say that you’ve eaten legit crocodile… but at least the chips were really good!
Overall, I don’t recommend the crocodile sliders simply because they really don’t offer value for what you get. They’re not gross but are somewhat grudgingly edible, but really don’t do you anything in the way of satiating hunger, unless that hunger is something only a small portion of an exotic meat can satisfy. On the whole, I give it a big, fat, “meh.”
