Lexington’s best tater tots happened by mistake. They are fun to play with and eat.
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The Best Thing I Ate This Week
Join Brian Simms and the LexGo Eat team as they search local menus for the best food at Lexington restaurants.
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The best tater tots in Lexington happened by mistake.
“It was totally a happy mistake,” DV8 Kitchen co-owner Rob Perez gleefully admitted about his restaurant’s most popular side dish. They might be listed simply as tater tots on the menu, but it often ends with people literally playing with their food.
Upon first glance of DV8’s puzzle-piece-shaped fried potato side dish, you might ponder to yourself, “Are these tater tots or Tetris tots?”
That’s because DV8’s tater tots are in the shape of Tetris pieces. Yes, I’m talking about the 1980s video game made popular by Nintendo. And if you don’t have the theme song playing in your head by now, well, keep waiting for that straight line to drop.
No matter what you call them, I’ll eat them up until at least level 40, with a small squirt of ketchup. That’s because the side dish of tots at the Lexington bakery and restaurant is the best thing I ate this week.
What makes them better than your usual tater tot?
“The unusual shape gives them more edges,” Perez said. “So when it’s just the roundness of the (tater tot) pellet, it doesn’t provide enough edges to get kind of a crispy edge, and I think that’s what people like. It’s so great when it’s soft in the middle and it’s crunchy on the edges.”
And on those edges is a generous dusting of DV8 Spice, a blend of 11 different spices including garlic, red chili powder, onion and smoked paprika. “It’s a mixture of both sweet and salt and little spice,” said Perez, who owns the business with his wife, Diane.
They opened their first location off Broadway in 2017. Their restaurant, which focuses on providing second-chance employment to those in recovery from substance abuse, didn’t have tots on the menu.
A couple of months after they opened, Perez’s food distributor told him he had “something a little unique.” It was something called “puzzle potatoes” and according to US Foods, the “puzzle-piece shapes encourage diners to ‘build a tower before they devour.’“
“And I looked at it, and I thought it was too kitschy. I thought it was dumb to be honest,” Perez said.
But during a test day, the kitchen ran out of regular tots, so they started using the puzzle-shaped potatoes. “And all of a sudden I have someone pull my shoulder and say, ‘Hey, these tots are the best tots I’ve ever had in my entire life,’” said Perez, who later had more people telling him the same.
Fast forward more than six years and the three unique chopped-and-formed shapes (there is no line shape) are used in three DV8 menu items: the DV Ocho ($9.75), the Breakfast Reuben ($9.75) and the popular Breakfast Burrito ($9.95). Sometimes they get used in special menu items like a Thanksgiving hash plate.
But the side dish of Tetris tots is definitely unique with its smokey spice blend and perfectly complements its popular sandwiches like orange marmalade chicken or chicken salad.
“I’ve never had anybody go. ‘Oh, yeah, those. I’ve seen those someplace else,’” Perez said.
What makes the tots really fun — besides eating them — is doing what your mom told you to never do, play with your food.
“What they do, every time, they get a napkin, and they lay it out, and they start trying to figure out what it is,” said Perez. “First they try to make it into a letter. And they’re like, no. And then they get stumped, kind of like you’re stumped on Sudoku and you push away the book,” Perez says with a giggle. “They get stumped, and then someone on the other side goes, well, what about this? And they get one of them out and they put it someplace like, nah. The ones that really are fun is they take the napkin and they put ketchup on it, and they try to figure it out and eat it while they go. It’s hilarious.”
DV8 Kitchen
Where: 867 S Broadway #140 and 594 E Third St. #100
Hours: 7 a.m.-2 p.m. Mon.-Fri.; 8 a.m.-3 p.m. Sat.-Sun.
Online menu: dv8kitchen.com
This story was originally published November 14, 2024 at 5:00 AM.
