Houston Rodeo Food Is Wilder Than Ever for 2025. Here Are the Must-Try Bites By Houston Eater

Cheesecakes on a stick, cotton candy bacon on a stick, and cheese curd tacos are coming to Houston

BetweenBetween the concerts, roping competitions, and thrilling rides, lies the heart (and stomach?) of the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo. Every year, rodeo fans weave through hundreds of food booths and, as usual, this year brings dozens of new — wild — dishes and new vendors. Picking which ones to drop your dollars on is always a challenge. Among the new foods at the rodeo this year, the dirty soda craze makes a big appearance; a couple of notable State Fair of Texas vendors join the fun; San Antonio’s famous Mamacita’s will serve up Mexican food; cheese curd tacos from the Minneapolis State Fair make it to Texas; and, to kick things up a notch, rodeo-goers can find cotton candy bacon on a stick.

 Kathy Tran

Drizzle Cheesecakes

Love cheesecake but wish it were more portable? Drizzle takes that favorite dessert and puts it on a stick. But there’s more! These cheesecake slices are coated in a sauce and then rolled in crumbs to create flavors like Sweet and Salty Pretzel, Strawberry Crunch, Biscoff Delight (a 2023 State Fair winning flavor), Churro Crumble, Hazelnut Deluxe, and more. The vendor will also unveil a brand new and exclusive flavor for the rodeo, Caramel Crunch Cheesecake. The booth is run by two-time Olympic swimming contestant Stephen El Gidi, who retired from his life as an athlete to pursue his true passion: Chocolate.

Dirty Sodas

This Midwest trend that went crazy on TikTok last year is worth trying to see if it is your speed or not. Cowboy Kettle Corn will sell several varieties, including the Cowboy (Coke with cherry, lime, and vanilla), Coconut Cowboy (Mr. Pibb with coconut and lime), the Dirty Cowboy (cherry Coke with piña colada cream and lime), the Dolphin Breeze (Spring with coconut and blue raspberry with a little gummy shark on top), and the Sour Gummy Refresher (a contradiction in terms made from Spring with sour cherry topped with Sour Patch Kids). This is for you if you already have a hella complicated Sonic drink order.

Richie’s Cheese Curd Tacos

Step out of Texas and into Minnesota with a cheese curd taco. Richie’s will be slinging this northern export, which looks a lot like San Antonio puffy tacos but is filled with meats like bratwurst, fried chicken, and bacon with a topping of flavored cheese curds (those are big, chunky, squeaky, wet pieces of curdled milk — and they’re more delicious than they sound).

 Kathy Tran

Palmer’s Hot Chicken

This Dallas chicken spot is known for its Nashville-style hot chicken sandwiches and for the hot chicken and pimento cheese in pancake batter balls that it unveiled at the Texas State Fair in 2024. They are the epitome of combining spicy, savory, and sweet foods and a must-eat bite.

Mamacita’s

Houston has excellent Tex-Mex and Mexican food, but so does San Antonio. The two cities just may dance toe-to-toe for the titles of best in the state. Mamacita’s is consistently named as one of San Antonio’s best Mexican food spots, and this Central Texas chain will make its debut at the rodeo to stand up to the judgment of Houstonians. What makes it special is how it taps into Persian, Mexican, and Spanish food traditions — its founder, Hossein Hagigholam, immigrated to Texas from Iran in the 1970s and fell in love with Mexican food. Mamacita’s restaurants, the first of which opened in 1985, are known for combining the architecture of all three cultures into a grand experience. At the rodeo, the restaurant will serve Drowning Taquitos — taquitos swimming in guacamole and pico.

 Kathy Tran

Rousso’s Fat Bacon

Find this booth to unlock the rodeo food you never knew you needed: Cotton candy bacon on a stick. These hearty slabs of bacon are about as long as your forearm and as delicious as pork belly — they are soft and chewy, not crispy. The Rousso’s team takes the cooked bacon, sticks it in a cotton candy machine to coat it, and then heats that cotton candy to make it melt and stick to the bacon. Voila, your new favorite food is born. This one also took a top prize at the 2024 State Fair of Texas.

Source: www.houston.eater.com

"Call Eli Torres at (832) 430-2107, for your home buying and selling needs."