Starting Friday, downtown employees will have nine days of the greasiest, fried’iest and fair’iest of the fair foods to hit Fort Wayne in the summertime: Fort Wayne Newspapers’ Three Rivers Festival’s affectionately named Junk Food Alley.

Jack Hammer, the festival’s executive director, shared some of the new food items appearing at this year’s festival. The most … um … unusual? Alligator on a stick.

That item’s vendor will offer shrimp and shark, too – each on a stick – as well as crab cakes.

“Vendors are very inventive,” Hammer says. “They’re always coming up with something new.”

Other foods new to this year’s festival? German chocolate funnel cake. Hammer guesses the vendor will use German chocolate cake better to make the funnel cake, and coconut in lieu of powdered sugar. The festival will also have a vendor serving bubble tea, a beverage made with black tapioca.

More on sushi tour

In last week’s column, I suggested some stops for something of a sushi tour of Fort Wayne. Two readers had some restaurants to add to the tour.

Erik Koik, who lives in Urbana, Ohio, but spends two to four nights a week in Fort Wayne, says Tokyo Seoul (6193 W. Jefferson Blvd.) has some of the best sushi in town, as well as some excellent Korean food.

Jeff Sharpe of Fort Wayne touts the Hibachi Grill Supreme Buffet (5507 Coldwater Road). He likes the restaurant for lunch, which has an all-you-can-eat buffet that includes sushi for less than $8.

“They usually have eight or 10 varieties out at any time, and they make it fresh right there,” he writes.

Fort Wayne loves The Melting Pot

On June 6, The Dish featured some most-desired restaurants in northeast Indiana, including a plea for a Melting Pot to move to town.

Brett Scowden, an operating partner with the Indianapolis location, wrote in about how amazed he was at the number of Fort Wayne customers he meets nearly nightly.

He did share, however, that no plans are in the works to bring a Melting Pot to Fort Wayne.

Too bad. Good to know we’re on his radar, though.

Tequila tasting

Old Crown Coffee Roasters is having a tequila tasting Saturday.

No, that’s not entirely accurate. Instead, it’s more of a tequila smackdown. From 6 to 8 p.m. Saturday, the restaurant is having what it’s calling “the Fort’s first ever Tequila vs. Mezcal smackdown.”

There will be welterweight and heavyweight divisions, as well as free and priced tastings.

Free blue agave tequila samples include El Ultimo’s Blanco, Reposado and Añejo. The three free mescal tastings are Scorpion’s Silver, Reposado and Añejo.

KAH Extra Gran Añejo will run $10 an ounce, and Gran Patròn Burdeos will run $20 an ounce. The latter is an ultra-premium tequila, according to Old Crown, “to which they run another distillation and then age it for another year in hand-selected French Bordeaux wine barrels.”

The tasting will also include two super-premium mezcals, with 1-ounce pours of each running $10 – the Scorpion 7 year Añejo and the Del Mague “Pechuga” Single Village Mezcal.

“The Del Maguey is exceptionally rare and exceptionally unique,” Old Crown owner Michael Woodruff writes in an email. “In short, for the third distillation, the mescal goes into a traditional clay and bamboo still with the addition of wild apples and plums, red plantains, pineapples, almonds, rice and, get this: a whole chicken breast (that is) suspended within the still.”

The event will also feature some themed cocktails and snacks.

$1 Coney dogs

To coincide with the Wing Ding 34 motorcycle convention at Memorial Coliseum this week, East State Coney (2831 E. State Blvd.) is offering $1 Coney dogs from 5 to 8 p.m. today through Saturday. Coneys typically run $1.45.

The restaurant also offers a variety of other dogs, such as a jalapeño dog, a kraut dog and a slaw dog.