If you've heard of totchos, it was probably only in the past few months. If you haven't yet run across this modification of the classic nachos, using middle-school favorite tater tots in place of tortilla chips, you likely will soon. In the last six months, they've gone from slipping in at the occasional dive bar to showing up at every trendy spot in town.
Suddenly, it seems like totchos are everywhere, conquering menus with a furor usually reserved for kale salad, pork belly, and bacon-wrapped anything. Thinking perhaps it was just me, I checked in with the Seattle-based food website Allrecipes. Julie Mumford, who works on consumer insights for the site, not only affirmed a dramatic spike in searches for tater tot nachos in January, she noted that, so far in 2015, people in Seattle are twice as excited about totchos as the rest of the country. (...)
J. Kenji López-Alt, who writes the Food Lab column on Serious Eats, spends a lot of his time figuring out how to perfect dishes like this. "There are some mash-ups so gut-wrenchingly glorious, so decadently delicious, so damn greasy that they deserve to be tasted, tested, improved, written about, modified, expanded, contracted, broken down, reassembled, broken down again, and possibly reassembled (after lunch) until they've finally emerged in their ultimate form," he wrote in a 2013 post. He considers totchos to be in this category. He also has some insight into what makes them so good: "Just like you can make or break a sandwich depending on how you stack it, proper layering is essential in constructing the perfect tray of totchos." (...)
It's easy to see the appeal, looking through the thick layers of cheddar that top most versions of the dish: It's affordable, gluten-free (as long as the tater tots aren't deep-fried in oil where gluten-y items were), and indulgent. It harks back to childhood, with the base of nostalgia-inducing tater tots. They're crispy and melty, and if you don't agree that those are the two most appealing textures in bar food, it's probably been dry below that rock you're living under. (...)
For all their gooey indulgence, not everyone loves totchos. Aside from the usual complaints of heaviness and unhealthiness, spirits portfolio ambassador Rocky Yeh, whose job brings him to many Seattle bars on a daily basis, says, "Totchos change the nachos from a shareable group snack to a less social, knife-and-fork food."
Suddenly, it seems like totchos are everywhere, conquering menus with a furor usually reserved for kale salad, pork belly, and bacon-wrapped anything. Thinking perhaps it was just me, I checked in with the Seattle-based food website Allrecipes. Julie Mumford, who works on consumer insights for the site, not only affirmed a dramatic spike in searches for tater tot nachos in January, she noted that, so far in 2015, people in Seattle are twice as excited about totchos as the rest of the country. (...)J. Kenji López-Alt, who writes the Food Lab column on Serious Eats, spends a lot of his time figuring out how to perfect dishes like this. "There are some mash-ups so gut-wrenchingly glorious, so decadently delicious, so damn greasy that they deserve to be tasted, tested, improved, written about, modified, expanded, contracted, broken down, reassembled, broken down again, and possibly reassembled (after lunch) until they've finally emerged in their ultimate form," he wrote in a 2013 post. He considers totchos to be in this category. He also has some insight into what makes them so good: "Just like you can make or break a sandwich depending on how you stack it, proper layering is essential in constructing the perfect tray of totchos." (...)
It's easy to see the appeal, looking through the thick layers of cheddar that top most versions of the dish: It's affordable, gluten-free (as long as the tater tots aren't deep-fried in oil where gluten-y items were), and indulgent. It harks back to childhood, with the base of nostalgia-inducing tater tots. They're crispy and melty, and if you don't agree that those are the two most appealing textures in bar food, it's probably been dry below that rock you're living under. (...)
For all their gooey indulgence, not everyone loves totchos. Aside from the usual complaints of heaviness and unhealthiness, spirits portfolio ambassador Rocky Yeh, whose job brings him to many Seattle bars on a daily basis, says, "Totchos change the nachos from a shareable group snack to a less social, knife-and-fork food."
by Naomi Tomky, The Stranger | Read more:
Image: Kelly O
