Cory Steiner was getting his haircut when his phone rang, a friend had urgent news.
Hey, you want to own a food stand at the Iowa State Fair?
Now, those who knew Steiner well, knew this was, indeed, a scoop. Over the years, he’d joked that he’d give his pinky toe just to be a concessionaire.
So he’s not sure he breathed before he replied: Absolutely.
“I was thinking it was a little popcorn stand or something,” Steiner remembers. “And my friend said the Gizmo was selling. Instantly, I was like, ‘No way! The Gizmo ain’t selling,’ because I knew how much everyone loved the Gizmo.”
Since 1946, Gizmos have been a quintessential food at the Iowa State Fair. A loose meat-like sandwich featuring a mix of Graziano’s Italian sausage crumbled with hamburger covered in homemade marinara sauce and mozzarella cheese, baked in an oven until bubbly and melting over the Italian hoagie’s crisp edges.
Add your own peppers — including new a giardiniera — to taste.
“Anyone that knows me, knows I’ll try anything,” says Steiner, 47, whose been in restaurant and bar management for a while.
So, within days, Steiner was on the phone with second-generation owner Carla Cardamom Wood and, within a few months, he was signing the title paperwork.
“Here it’s go, go, go and get it done, which I love,” Steiner says, stepping off the Gizmo food line and slipping off his gloves. “It’s kind of my personality anyway. I’m a fast-paced kind of guy.”
But as quick as he moves for every order, Steiner has a more unhurried view of Gizmo’s long-term plans.
The Gizmo is celebrating 80 years on the Iowa State fairgrounds, 78 of which were all under the ownership of one family. Steiner wants that. Bad.
To be “a full-time carney,” he says with a laugh, but, really, to make this a family business. And an expanding one at that: More stands here and in Minnesota, where he just bought the Gizmo’s second location, which he will open for the first time as owner three days after gates close in Iowa.
Carla’s advice for the nascent empresario? “Don’t mess up her sandwich,” Steiner says. And she said it with a little ribbing and a dash of dead seriousness. Like a good Nonna does.
And considering Steiner wants another 80 years — at least — he wouldn’t dare.
Gizmo’s owner grew up in the back of Crescenti’s
A south sider born and raised, Steiner passed childhood in the back of the Crescenti’s stand.
The owners were cousins in that south side sense. Kin by way of closeness and shared language.
At the fair, Steiner bounced between Crescenti’s and the old arcade tent that used to be by the Bill Riley stage. Back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, all day long.
And in the rare moments he bopped somewhere else, he beelined for the old double Ferris wheel. Best place to sneak peeks at the ticketed acts around the grounds, monster trucks or Grandstand acts. The good stuff.
The fair was summer to Steiner, which in a kid’s mind is like freedom and lightness made manifest.
“That fair is what we look forward to as Iowans, to come here,” he says.
Steiner was never the book smart kid, he says. He knew hustle and hard labor, though. An innate workaholic, he was an entrepreneur by nature.
“When I had 17 W2s in one year, I was like, well, maybe I wasn’t made for this boss stuff,” he says.
So by 19, he was self-employed, burying cables as a contractor for MediaCom. And at 26, he opened a car wash.
Now, he owns eight laundromats and a company that runs hundreds of bar ATMs and amusement devices such as jukeboxes and pool tables. Three years ago, he got a pilot license, so he flies small planes, too.
And before he bought the Gizmo stand, he invested in the Bird’s Nest bar by the Cultural Center, a permanent location at the fair catering to the nearby free stages.
“I like to challenge myself,” he says. “I’m never really satisfied. You know what I mean? Because I’m always trying to improve anything and everything.”
Anything and everything, that is, except the Gizmo sandwich itself. Of course.
When he bought the stand, the secret recipe was part of the deal.
And that, he stresses, is staying the same.
Packing the bun: Why the Gizmo stayed a staple
Steiner was ready. He knew so. In his soul. He was ready.
But his gut was telling a different story. When the fairground gates opened last year, his first year, he was so nervous, he says.
“I remember I felt like I knew nothing,” he says. “I just kept thinking ‘I’m gonna come into the fair, and I’m going to mess up a staple.’”
And, God, he didn’t want to screw up.
The Gizmo sandwich — not a grinder, a Gizmo, thank you very much — was invented at Carl and Ted’s Dining Hall, a long-gone diner that used to be in the Administration Building’s basement. But when owner Carl Cardamom got a portable stand, he moved into the open air and has been there ever since.
“This is a good spot,” he told the Register back in 1996. “I sent three kids through college here.”
Carl’s daughter, Carla Cardamom Wood — who continued to sling sandwiches after his death in 2001 — loved the fair as much as her dad.
When she wasn’t manning the line, longtime customers knew to find her set up in her navy-blue folding chair, just under the awning of her stand, taking in the kids’ talent contest on the Riley stage.
So when she set her mind to retiring, she cared that her father’s legacy continued — correctly.
Wood came over to Steiner’s house soon after selling and they mocked up the stand’s hot line in his kitchen. Practicing mix the meats and making the sauce and portioning out the sandwiches.
And she came for the first weekend of the State Fair in 2025, to show him how to set up the tent and the pepper stand and to cook the sausage-hamburger combination 80 pounds at a time, stirring regularly, a chest workout if there ever was one, he says.
“We try to pack as much meat as we possibly can into a seven-inch Italian bun,” Steiner says. He wants the sandwich to feel heavy for $13.
“I’m not all about the money. I’m all about long-term,” he says. “I don’t want the quick fair money. I want long-term customers. That’s what I’m looking for.”
A dream and an opportunity — expanding a fair food empire
Steiner’s eyes dart among the picnic tables near his stand as he sits for a bit. And rarely does he sit for a bit.
But when he can, he’s watching people’s reactions, he says, taking notes for his team.
He wants customers to give each other that little nod when they see their sandwich come over the counter, you know that “ohhhhh yeah, this is going to be good” bob.
And for the line to move quickly. He’s always trying to hit that concessionaire’s bullseye, that sweet spot of staying ahead but not letting food sit.
Last week, in the fair’s first days, he was underscoring the importance of sprinkling the mozzarella beyond the edges of the roll, so it bubbles over the entire yaw of the sandwich. It’s also a handy way to stop the bun from burning.
“I am a perfectionist,” he says. “I tell everybody that works for me, make it look perfect because I think food is an art.”
“It’s 2026, everyone takes pictures before they even take a bite,” he adds.
“They don’t even bite it first,” he stresses, “so it has to be pretty.”
Same goes for the look of the stand, which Steiner had redone before this year’s fair. He’s plastered images of Gizmos and Italian sausages across the prime real estate of the stall.
If people eat with their eyes, they certainly buy with their eyes, too, he figures.
Steiner has always been in restaurant management, but he loves to cook. Grill, specifically. Steak is his specialty.
“I have one man crush: Gordon Ramsay. If I could rewind my life, I would actually love to cook full time,” he says.
He’s getting the chance, at least a bit, at Gizmo. This year they’ve added an Italian sausage marinated in a homemade sauce, topped with mild fried peppers or hot giardiniera, and sprinkled with Parmesan cheese.
“I’m trying to stay in that sausage world, not get out of the box,” he says.
But he is trying to get out of the stand more. Introduce himself to some of the regulars, who are just so used to Carla. “They’re all getting to know I’m the new face of the Gizmo,” he adds.
The new face — for now.
His vision is eventually training up his kids to take over — Caleb, 19; Jake, 17; Asher, 16; Callie, 15 — who he’s drafted to work this year along with his wife, Chelsea; sister, Staci; and niece, Ella.
A real family concession stand operation, he says, so his kids and their kids and their cousins and their cousins’ kids, too, can post up in the back and run around the grounds. Just like he did.
Memories, he says. Honestly, all this is way more about memories than it is about food or money or legacy.
“I love having us all cooped up in this trailer together working,” he says. “I work so much that I don’t really get to see them all the time, but, here, we have no choice but to be together for 11 days.”
“It’s like forget the outside. We’re at the fair.”
The grind is bearable when the load is shared. And it is a grind. Because not just 11 days: It’s a few weeks of setup, a few months of ordering and preparing and a full year of thinking about your menu.
“I lay in bed some days, loopy, tired, exhausted,” he says. “Then you wake up in the mornings and you’re like, let’s go to the fair!”
Once gates close in Iowa Sunday, he’ll have three days to set up for the biggest fair he’s ever worked: Minnesota, which boasts some two million fairgoers yearly, nearly double Iowa’s attendance.
But he’s ready, he says. Even his gut is cooperating this time.
“I just told my wife yesterday that I still don’t believe it’s true that we have stands at the Iowa State Fair,” he says. “It’s been a dream of mine forever, and we finally got an opportunity.”
And he got to keep his pinky toe, too.
Courtney Crowder is a senior writer and Iowa Columnist. You can contact her at (515) 284-8360 or ccrowder@dmreg.com.
This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: For 80 years, Gizmo has been a State Fair staple. Meet the new owner.
Reporting by Courtney Crowder, Des Moines Register / Des Moines Register
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Courtney Crowder, Des Moines Register | USA TODAY Network
