Can we possibly get enough deep-fried food?
Clearly not, if the question is weighed while standing in front of Chicken Charlie's tricked-out trailers on the main promenade at Cal Expo, site of the California State Fair.
Thousands of fairgoers will line up at Chicken Charlie's through the run of the fair, which ends Sept. 1. "Fry it and they will come," could be the mantra.
The trailers are covered in signs ("Totally fried") and gigantic photos and illustrations of deep-fried items for sale – Twinkies, Oreos, Pop Tarts, Spam, frog legs, cheese ravioli, avocado, onion strings, zucchini, artichokes and mushrooms. This year, the hot new items are deep-fried White Castle hamburgers and frog legs which, according to the sign, "Tastes like chicken."
On Saturday morning, the usual behind-the-scenes bustle dominated the Chicken Charlie site. Chicken Charlie himself conducted a tour around a custom-built trailer, which he and his brother designed to the last detail.
Chicken Charlie is really Charlie Boghosian. He and his crew call themselves the Chicken Mafia.
Boghosian, who is "39 going on 19," is a savvy marketer, skilled at snagging live spots on local TV wherever the Chicken Charlie bandwagon travels. And why not? Every year he unveils new deep-fried items at California fairs, dishes that at first seem absurd but end up selling like ... well, hot cakes don't come close.
Remember his deep-fried Krispy Kreme doughnut-chicken sandwich, fried Coca-Cola and fried cheesecake? "I was real proud of that one," he said.
You name it, he batters it, fries it and sells it.
"The people in Sacramento love my fried foods, and I love them back," Boghosian said.
On the surface, Boghosian would appear to be a fry cook who travels a five-fair circuit in California, selling food of mass appeal, but with questionable nutritional credentials. But there is more to his story.
His Armenian Christian family emigrated to San Diego, where his father opened a grocery. At 14, Charlie saw two things that would change his life: the Elvis Presley movie "Roustabout" – in which the King travels with a carnival – and an ad for the San Diego County Fair.
"I told my dad I wanted to get a job at the fair and we'd call that my summer vacation," Boghosian said. He charmed one of his dad's customers – a retiree with a car – into joining him.
"We walked through the front gate and the very first person we saw, we asked him for a job and he hired us. He was Bob Jackson, who owned the charbroiled corn and baked potato booths," he said. "I ended up working for that man for 12 summers."
Time passed and Boghosian graduated from San Diego State University with a degree in criminal justice. He was preparing to apply for a career with the FBI. "But at the last minute I decided to stay in the fair business, even after dreaming about law-enforcement work all my life."
What happened? Well, a vendor had offered to sell her Broaster chicken stand to Boghosian's mentor, Jackson. "Bob said to her, 'I'll buy your Broasted chicken stand if Charlie buys it with me.' So I did, and he gave me the name Chicken Charlie."
In 2001, Boghosian "got jealous of McDonald's fried apple pie," he recalls. "I told my partner, 'Our chicken is phenomenal, but I want to add a dessert.' That's when we came up with the deep-fried Twinkie. The people went nuts. I saw that America loves to eat. That was the beginning."
On Saturday at the fair, Chicken Charlie stood in front of his rig, loud rock music washing over him. He watched a line of headless, rotisseried chickens do the can-can on a 26-foot LED screen. They were backdropped by a wall of flame.
At night the LED strip lights up like downtown Las Vegas, Boghosian said.
Inside the trailer were six deep fryers, stainless-steel warmers, heat lamps, waffle irons, prep stations, a refrigerator as big as an apartment, and a huge rotisserie that can cook 50 whole chickens every 75 minutes. A second rotisserie – one that Boghosian designed himself – was parked outside, so the public can see it cook 40 chickens at a time.
In the older trailer, two genuine Broaster machines, for which Boghosian paid $30,000 13 years ago, can cook 128 chicken pieces every nine minutes.
Away from the fair circuit, Boghosian experiments with the deep-fryers in the kitchen of his San Diego home.
"Normal families have barbecues, but we do fry fests," he said. "Friends and family come over with crazy things for me to fry."
Call The Bee's Allen Pierleoni at (916) 321-1128.
