LA County Fair 2023: Hot Cheetos Cheese Pickle Pizza, dining discounts, much s’more

Pizza covered with Flamin’ Hot Cheetos and dill pickle chips, massive deep-fried s’mores and the usual array of snacks and sweets will be tempting guests at the LA County Fair in Pomona.

The fair will open at 5 p.m. Friday, May 5 with a discount admission of $5. It will run through Memorial Day, May 29 at the 487-acre Fairplex.

This will be the second time that the fair is in the spring. The event moved from September to May in 2022 after taking place in the fall for nearly a century.

Attendance dipped to 635,421 paying visitors in 2022 from 731,817 in 2019, the last year the festival was held before the novel coronavirus pandemic shut it down in 2020 and 2021. But fair organizers said they were pleased with the attendance.

In 2022, people were eager to get out of the house after two years of COVID-19 restrictions. Dominic Palmieri, also known as the Midway Gourmet, thinks a similar urge could drive up numbers in 2023.

“Weather is great in the month of May, and people are ready to get back out again because you guys have had so much rain and wintery weather that people have a little bit of cabin fever,” he said in a phone interview.

Palmieri runs several concessions at the fair, including Biggy’s, which serves attention-grabbing items such as a Cap’n Crunch Chicken Sandwich, which he is bringing to Pomona after serving it at the OC Fair last year.

This year, he’s excited about his Hot Cheetos Cheese Pickle Pizza, made with mozzarella cheese and a white dill sauce. It will be available at Enzo’s Pizzeria.

“It will be the game-changer. It will be one of the media darlings and customer social media darlings of the year because it’s flat-out delicious.”

Palmieri’s concessions will also be serving such items as a Loco Elote Ramen Noodle Cup, made with Flamin’ Hot Cheetos, and Michelaguas, agua frescas served in barrel-shaped cups with Chamoy on the rim and sliced mango on top.