JR’s SouthPork Ranch hopes to offer a lobster roll topped with caviar and 24-karat gold.
Writer: Michael Morain
Photographer: Joelle Blanchard
Let’s start with the “World’s Most Expensive Lobster Roll.” It’s a quarter pound of fresh Maine lobster dressed in creme fraiche and nestled into a pillowy roll enriched with duck fat and Champagne. Then it’s sprinkled with glistening black Hackleback caviar and crowned, just for good measure, with flakes of 24-karat gold.
Now, I’m not a historian, but I have a hunch this is what the Romans were eating right before the empire fell. It makes Marie Antoinette’s cake look like a plain old Twinkie.
It’s decadent. It’s extravagant. And for a mere $150, you just might be able to buy it at the Iowa State Fair.
Months before the fair opens in August, the sandwich was one of about 20 dishes that landed on a crowded counter in a test kitchen at the Sysco distribution center in Ankeny, where a team from JR’s SouthPork Ranch was deciding what to enter in the fair’s annual new food contest. Dish after dish came off the stove or out of the oven with a cloud of steam, a burst of flames and an unmistakable whiff of ambition.
“We love to move the needle,” said chef Heith Sheeley, grinning while he waved a lobster claw the size of his face.
You may recall that JR’s team introduced a basic lobster roll to the fair in 2023. They added a 2-foot version last summer with lobster flown in directly from Portland, Maine. They sold $225,000 in lobster rolls last year and could have sold more if they hadn’t run out on the fair’s second-to-last day. Turns out, Iowa isn’t exactly crawling with backup lobsters.
So the challenge, again, is to come up with the next big thing. And if anybody’s up to it, it’s this team, led by Sheeley, who has the culinary creativity of Willy Wonka, and JR’s CEO Brooks Reynolds, who founded the Blue Ribbon Bacon Festival and has the showmanship of P.T. Barnum.
During the school year, Sheeley oversees Greek House Chefs, which feeds a small empire of fraternity and sorority houses at colleges and universities across the country. It’s owned by Carey and Corey Hansen, the local couple who also owns Hansen’s Manhattan Deli on Ingersoll Avenue. So yeah, they know how to feed a crowd.
“For the fair, it’s all about finding that balance between what people want, what we can mass produce and what we’re proud to stand behind,” Sheeley said.
He is especially attuned to food trends he spots on TikTok, on Instagram and in focus groups with college students. “I spent 115 nights in Marriotts last year,” he said. “I’m always out in restaurants, always searching Google in whatever town I’m in.”
His fair team has a year-round group text to collect ideas. They try out recipes a few times a year, usually at Sysco, which can supply just about any ingredients they might need from a farm, dairy or gold mine anywhere in the world.
At one point during the marathon tasting session this spring, Sheeley manhandled half of an 80-pound wheel of Parmesan cheese onto the counter. He had scraped out the middle to form a shallow crater, doused it with Everclear and ignited it with a blowtorch. As soon as the alcohol burned off and melted the top layer of cheese, he added hot pasta and swirled it around with a splash of cream — simple enough, but spectacular.
A flaming wheel of Parmesan cheese, melting to coat some pasta
“When I first tried this in Italy, I was a few glasses of wine in, and I don’t quite remember the technique,” he said. “We tried this earlier with brandy, but it didn’t taste right, and vodka didn’t light very easily. But Everclear? Bingo.”
A lick of fire landed on a scrap of parchment paper but was quickly extinguished by Sheeley’s partner chef, Sarah Strong-Tuttle, otherwise known as Queen Tut. She shrugged. “Once you’ve worked at the fair,” she said, “it takes quite a bit to get a rise out of you.”
Sometime before or after the pyrotechnic noodles — frankly, it was hard to keep track — the chefs served bourbon-braised pork belly sliders. And salmon on a stick. And simple egg salad sandwiches made with AE Dill Pickle Sour Cream Dip. And not-so-simple chicken and waffle sandwiches with a smear of pimento cheese and a drizzle of maple syrup.
A chicken and waffle sandwich drizzled with maple syrup
And the balls. So. Many. Balls. After the success last year of JR’s Party Balls — deep-fried dollops of AE Party Dip, bell peppers, onions and parsley, coated in potato chips — the team spun out a number of crispy-crunchy-gooey variations. Lobster Rangoon balls with sweet and sour sauce. Pickle wrap balls with cream cheese, relish and bits of ham. If it can be scooped, it can be balled.
With no end to the feast in sight, Queen Tut pulled out trays of fresh doughnuts, inspired by three Midwestern classics: puppy chow (topped with chocolate ganache, peanut butter mousse and sugar-coated cereal), strawberry pretzel salad (Jell-O glaze, cream cheese mousse, pretzel bits) and scotcheroos (more ganache, butterscotch mousse, Rice Krispies).
A trio of doughnuts inspired by Midwestern classics: puppy chow, strawberry pretzel salad and scotcheroos.
And then — because why not? — she fired up a cotton candy machine to swaddle bacon skewers in maple-flavored floss. The result looked like a big insect, mummified by an even bigger spider, but I can’t complain. It was delicious.
A strip of bacon in maple-flavored cotton candy
All told, the team taste-tested almost two dozen dishes — some destined for fair fame, others likely to live only in group-text legend. But that’s the spirit of the whole operation: Go big, go weird and maybe go viral.
At press time, the team was still finalizing its decisions about the fair’s new food contest.
The gilded lobster roll was a likely contender, if only to generate buzz in such a crowded market. Other lobster spinoffs were still in the mix, too: lobster poutine, fried lobster “popcorn,” lobster biscuits and gravy, and a colossal lobster claw on a stick, served with a little bowl of melted butter. Each claw comes from a 5-pound beast.
The team peppered Sheeley with questions and feedback. What’s the price point? Can they sell a bucket of them for $500? Or maybe just six with a six-pack of White Claws and they could call it “Claws and Claws.” Do they come pre-cracked? They’re supposed to make a popping sound, right? They could serve them with a QR code that has a tutorial about how to pull out the meat. Oh, and whoever gets them should realize they’ll have lobster juice dripping down their arms.
Sheeley smiled. “The fun part of this is we’ll just have to keep buying lobster and caviar until we get it right.”
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