I don’t know if you know this, but tater tots are hot right now. In fact, to quote 7-Eleven director of fresh food Robin Murphy, “Tots are hot,” and since you now have two people saying that you know it must be true. What is also true is that 7-Eleven is now installing tater tot bars in participating stores, so you know what that means: there are now tater totcho bars probably right down your street.
Now 7-Eleven has had a hot dog and nacho bar for a while, and that’s all well and good, but to interest the kids these days you got to jazz that up with something new and fresh. Something that captures the food zeitgeist void that bacon and pumpkin spice used to. Something cheap. Something carbs. Something… come on, it’s tater tots folks.
“They’re served up on appetizer menus at trendy bars and restaurants.” says Robin Murphy, “You can even find tots and topping bars at weddings. 7‑Eleven has its own version of a tot bar for customers to create their own favorite tasty tot concoction. We encourage culinary creativity.” And by “encourage culinary creativity” they mean “We want you to dump a bunch of stuff on a pile of tots and go crazy.”
So far as stuff that can be dumped on your food goes, the topping bar is shared between their hot dogs, nachos, and now tots, so the combinations could get… interesting? Yeah, let’s say interesting. You get your classic nacho chili sauce, melted cheese, pico de gallo, diced onion, and sliced jalapenos, but you can also mix it up with some mustard, ketchup, relish, pickles, and ranch dressing. I don’t know about you, but I sure do love me a tasty relish and ranch combo. Note: relish and ranch sounds like a terrible combo.
In my younger, more nacho militant days, I would have gone on and on about how no convenience store nacho is a nacho worth eating, be they made with chips or with tater tots. In these more tolerant days I will go so far as to say that these are probably not the greatest version of tater totchos you can find out there, but you can get 10 for $1 or 25 for $2, and at that price point, you know exactly what you’re getting. If you’re fine with $2 tater totchos, I’m sure these are worth every penny, but if you want something better, check out your local hipster dining establishment and pay probably in excess of $10 for an order.
For some reason they don’t appear to have any of these in any 7-Eleven near me, and when you put “7-Eleven Tots” or even “Tots” in the search bar of their website they have no idea what you’re talking about, but I trust that these are out there in the world somewhere. I don’t know where of course, but maybe you can find them. Let me know how they are if you do, especially if you go with the relish and ranch combo. Mmmmm…
The only question that remains is when are they going to get cheesy tots?