Fairgoers who need a gentle push off their Pronto Pups-cheese curds grazing routine will definitely find inspiration in the bumper crop of delicious new foods at the 2007 Minnesota State Fair. This year's freshman class is full of taste-of-Minnesota treats.

Starting with Spam, which, unbelievably, is making its Great Minnesota Get-Together debut.

"Spam is a Minnesota icon," said Spam Burger booth co-owner Kevin Arnold. "It deserves to be celebrated at the fair." Absolutely. Arnold and business partner Tim Duren are preparing the mystery meat two ways. First is a Spam burger, a fried slice of the stuff, browned and sizzling, topped with American cheese and slipped into a sesame seed bun (****, $4), and as I inhaled it, my mind happily flashed to 1960s family camping trips. The Spam Curds (**, $4), dices of cheese-flavored Spam that are battered, deep-fried and dunked with ranch dressing, fell into the crowded fair-foods category that's best labeled "curiosity."

At the Lamb Shoppe, there's Lamb on a Stick (****, $6), cubes of mouth-watering, merlot-marinated grilled lamb (pasture-raised on the Hutchinson farm of Connie Karstens and Doug Rathke), served with a tangy Greek-inspired yogurt dipping sauce. I loved the deep-fried smelt (****, $5) at Walleye on a Stick, long and skinny, gently battered and popping with that distinctive fresh-fish flavor.

Boy, talk about refreshing: Minneapolis' Midtown Global Market has a fair outpost that's stocked with stunningly ripe fruit. I lucked into crimson, spectacularly juicy Alderman plums (****, 3 for $1), raised on a farm near Buffalo, and each fragrant bite seemed to provide dietary redemption for all the grease that preceded it. Just-picked strawberries from a White Bear Lake farm are being mixed into the soft-serve malts (****, $4.50) at the perennially popular Dairy Goodness Bar, and it's hard to imagine ordering anything else, they're that peak-flavor great.

Two other ice-cream stands make highly favorable impressions. Bridgeman's, a beloved Gopher State name, is serving up big strawberry and chocolate ice cream sodas (****, $5), frosty and nicely nostalgic day-at-the-fair refreshers. And over at Lingonberry Ice Cream, they're serving up a beaut, the Lingonberry Turnover (****, $5.50). It's flaky puff pastry glazed with lingonberry preserves, then topped with luscious lingonberry ice cream, a dollop of lingonberry jam and whipped cream. It sounds like overkill, but it so isn't.

Leave it to the Giggles Campfire Grill brain trust to put a gotta-taste spin on chicken wings (****, $6). Plump wings -- a half-dozen per order -- are smoked on-site, and co-owner Doug Holter, a Paganini of the deep fryer, yanks 'em out of the oil just when the skin is perfectly crisp and the meat is tender and juicy. The accompanying plum sauce has a naughty chipotle kick.

The fair's most skilled bakeshop, Country Scones & Coffee, is knocking out a slap-your-forehead idea that is disarmingly simple and wonderfully satisfying: warm buttermilk scones ("Fresh hot scones!" yells a staffer, obviously taking the carnival barker thing seriously), split down the middle and filled with butter and sweet strawberry jam (****, $3.50). "Every year, people asked if we had jam and butter and we didn't," said co-owner Chris Gleize. "So we finally decided to do it." Their other new effort, a milk chocolate-marshmallow scone drizzled with caramel sauce they call Rocky Road Scones on a Stick (**, $4), is sweet. Really, really sweet.

Maybe save that craving for Ultimate Confections, which is putting S'mores on a Stick (***½, 50 cents or three for $1.25), a springy marshmallow dunked in rich chocolate -- dark or milk -- and rolled in graham cracker crumbs: it's a campfire on a stick, and a total bargain.

Tejas should be awarded the "most innovative" blue ribbon for taking full advantage of the fair's new strong-beer rule. The Tex-Mexer is stirring up a BeerGarita (***, $6.75), which is just what the name suggests: Leinenkugel's Honey Weiss blended with a lime syrup and ice. The results are slushy and oddly refreshing, but definitely an acquired taste. The stand's other newbie is a BLP (**, $5), a bacon-lettuce-pico de gallo (and cheddar) quesadilla that makes for a perfectly pleasant breakfast. A more colorful a.m. idea is next door at the Ragin Cajun, which starts the day with a breakfast bread bowl (***, $6.25) filled with scrambled eggs, fried potatoes and a zesty jambalaya; it was even better with a few shakes of green Tabasco.

Famous Dave's, the fair's best-smelling stand, has a definite winner in its Knuckle Sandwich (***, $6), a hoagie stuffed with smoky, thin-sliced barbecue pork and crowned with tangy caramelized onions .

Three riffs on the Pronto Pup meet with varying success. O'Gara's Irish Deli is doing a Dublin Dawg (**, $4), and it sounds amusing: a corned beef and cabbage hot dog, B&DF (battered and deep-fried). Funny thing is, there's just a little corned beef flavor and really nothing in the cabbage department. The Uffda Brat (**½, $5) at Sausage Sister and Me, a pork-beef sausage, dressed with mashed potatoes and sauerkraut and wrapped in lefse, is a tad on the bland side, but then again, it's Norwegian, so it probably fits the comfort-food bill just fine. Venturing deeply into the kitsch territory, the Blue Moon Drive-In Theater is doing peanut butter-infused hot dogs (**, $3); it's probably best left to true-blue PB fans. And I can't say I'd return for a second shot at the Sloppy Joe on a Stick (*, $4) at Axel's Bull Bites, a hot dog seasoned with who-knows-what. Why not just have a corn dog?

Deep-fried fruit -- why eat healthy, right? -- is a 2007 theme. It doesn't quite work, though, at either Fried Fruit on a Stick (**, $3), featuring speared melon, grapes, bananas and pineapples dipped in sweet dough, fried and doused in cinnamon-sugar; the fryer's heat turns the fruit's delicate flavors into a watery mush. Ditto the apple-caramel-cinnamon dessert -- served in a waffle cone (**, $4.75) at Coaster's.

There are others that don't seemed destined to become classics. When it came to Buffalo Chips (**, $4) at Delicious Potato Skins, the portions were huge, but unfortunately so was the overpowering seasoning. It was hard to taste anything but breading and grease in the hockey puck-ish crab cakes (*, $6) and calamari (**, $7) at the Seafood Shoppe. Butterscotch Frozen Cake (*, $3) at Scotch Eggs felt like a rocky marriage between a Dairy Queen Dilly Bar and a refrigerated Twinkie. Finally, does Coca-Cola-flavored syrup do justice to a funnel cake (**, $6) and frozen chocolate cheesecake (*, $3)? I'm going to go with, "No."

Rick Nelson • rdnelson@startribune.com

Fair food: How it rates

****

• Alderman plums, Midtown Global Market, Cosgrove St. between Dan Patch Av. and Wright Av.