Tater Tots, those crunchy little pellets of shredded potato, are a ubiquitous bar snack, thanks in no small part to the McMenamins chain, which offers them -- “Cajun” style -- at nearly every location. A less common but still widespread variation, variously known as totchos, tochos, tachos, and dirty tots, improves on the original with with melted cheese, sour cream, salsa, and other nacho toppings.
Totchos are old hat in Portland, where they're a mainstay of sports bar menus and the concession stands at Providence Park, but the dish is having something of a national moment. Interest in the dish spiked starting in 2013, as totchos appeared in faux dive bars from Seattle to Brooklyn and spawned articles on serious food blogs and despicable content mills alike.
It is fitting that Oregon should be at the forefront of the national totcho trend, because tater tots were invented here. In 1952, brothers Nephi and Golden Grigg bought a foreclosed-upon freeze-drying plant in Ontario, on the Idaho border, with a plan to make frozen French fries. They named the business Ore-Ida. Fry production left a lot of waste in the form of potato shavings, which were sold as livestock feed, at very low profit. The Griggs brothers' solution: mix the shavings with spices, form them into pellets, and fry them. The new product was an immediate hit, and Ore-Ida remains a major employer in Ontario today. (Heinz, the current owner of Ore-Ida, did not respond to requests for comment on this story.)
Given the Tater Tot's sixty-two-year history and America's penchant for gastronomic excess, it seems inevitable that someone would eventually cover them in melted cheese to be consumed with beer. But can Portland claim credit for the invention? Several hours of searching periodicals, cookbooks, and the Internet indicate the answer is yes, probably.
Though there are some prior examples of cheesy Tater Tot recipes (one, submitted to Taste of Home's Quick Cooking in 2003 by a reader in Tennessee, involves four different dairy products and a crushed-potato-chip topping), the first mention of proper Tater Tot nachos in any media was in 2006, with the opening Oaks Bottom Public House in Sellwood. The man responsible: Jim Parker, a prolific publican and former journalist who opened the pub with New Old Lompoc owner Jerry Fechter.
If you drink beer in Portland, you've likely been served by Parker at some point. In addition to Oaks Bottom, he's worked at or helped open Concordia Ale House, the Horse Brass, the Green Dragon, plus several pubs in Colorado and Washington. These days he's a brewery consultant and part-time bartender at Baerlic Brewing.
Parker was in charge of the menu at Oaks Bottom. One evening before opening, while drinking with one of his bartenders, Jonathan Carmean, Parker suggested an unorthodox appetizer.
"I said, I have an idea that sounds a little nuts, but I think it could be really big here. I think I'll call them nacho tots," Parker recalls. "And he said, 'no, they shall be called totchos.'"
Fechter, Parker's partner, and the pub's cook were less taken with the idea.
"They looked at me like I was growing a third ear. They said, 'that sounds like stoner food,'" Parker says. "They were humoring me to put them on the menu, but it ended up being one of our most ordered items."
The Oaks Bottom totchos are topped with cheddar and jack cheese, chopped tomato, jalapenos, black olives, red onion, sour cream and salsa. An alarmingly large portion, hot from the broiler, runs $9. They remain a signature appetizer nine years after their debut.
"The reason it all really came about is because I led this deprived childhood where I never got tater tots as a kid, and once I discovered them I was hog-wild over them," Parker says. "Also, I hated the way tortilla chips got all soggy [in nachos].
The dish spread rapidly, with imitations springing up at other Portland bars within weeks of the pub's opening. Soon, other cooks were riffing on Parker's innovation: Tater Tots with garlic and Parmesan at the Jolly Roger bar; Tater Tots with olive oil, lemon juice and oregano at Mad Greek Deli; housemade, cheese-filled tots at Tilt; housemade tots with smoked salmon and cream cheese at Seasons & Regions Seafood Grill; Tater Tots with bacon, grilled onion and a fried egg at The Dog House food truck; "okonomiyaki tots" with spicy mayonnaise, Worcester-like tonkatsu sauce, bonito flakes, togarashi spice and dried seaweed at Boxer Ramen.
At Bunk Bar, a nocturnal offshoot of his popular sandwich shop chain, owner Tommy Habetz serves Tater Tots smothered in a rich mole seasoned with chiles and sweet spices and topped with avocado, cilantro and queso fresco.
"We had been doing debris gravy fries, which are like New Orleans poutine fries, and I wanted to do something that could be vegan," Habetz says of the mole tots. "To me it just seemed like a natural thing with how popular poutine had been getting."
Though Parker says he experimented with other Tater Tot toppings, including a Greek version with feta ("after-hours drinking can lead to a lot of ideas," he says), and even considered opening a Tater Tot-only food cart, but is relieved he stuck with the nacho theme at Oaks Bottom.
"I was trying to figure out some way to do poutine, with gravy and cheese curds, with Tater Tots," he says, "but I'm glad I went with the totcho thing. I'd hate, nine years later, to have a reporter call me and ask me about being the father of poutots."
February 7, 2019 Update:
Jim Parker, beloved Portland publican who invented the totcho, has died
Parker was a well known figure in the craft beer scene in Oregon, Washington and Colorado.
-- Ben Waterhouse
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