Chicago is a city of great bars (and great drinkers), but rarely do restaurant reviewers investigate bar food. Enter the Tribune’s Kevin Pang, whose Cheap Eater column has become a Chicago must-read. Surely the buzz about Sylark’s tater tots was too good to be true.
Some things, like spray-on hair, are so laughable and ingenious, your forehead turns red from all the palmsmacking.
So the idea that a bar lives and dies by the reputation of its ... get ready ... tater tots might be the savviest marketing hook I’ve heard. Think about it: This happy and humble food of our collective youth (no one ever reveals horrifying tater tot flashbacks to a psychiatrist) gets elevated by a shrewd restaurateur who makes it a signature dish. Tots! What person with a halfway-decent childhood would turn that down?
It’s a smart business move, because tater tots look great on paper and are nearly impossible to mess up. They are either really good (hot, crispy) or really bad (not hot, not crispy). There is no middle ground, no shades of gray. As long as you diligently tend the fryalator, the tots market is yours to corner.
That is what Skylark in Pilsen has discovered.
The corner space at Cermak Road and Halsted Street sat vacant for six years before a trio of business partners aiming for “a good bang-for-your-buck food and beer-wise” opened Skylark in 2003. They intended the bar to cater to the burgeoning Pilsen/Bridgeport artists community. They’d keep the kitchen open late, serving beer-battered cod sandwiches and panko-crusted chicken breasts into the early morning. It would have the interior charms of an American Legion Hall in Akron, only with a liquor license and the lights turned low. Soon, the nearby Chinese and Latino enclaves took notice, University of Illinois at Chicago students wandered far enough south on Halsted, and 20-something hipsters thought: “Neat-o, an ironic photo booth.” They all made Skylark their own. The bar celebrates its eighth birthday next week.
With it came the growth of Skylark’s tater tots reputation. It was the idea of co-owner Bob McHale, who thought tots would be a memorable alternative to obligatory french fries.
Plus: “It’s easy to share a basket of tater tots,” McHale said. “And it stays hotter.”
What’s more, they haven’t spent one cent on marketing. Besides an animated all-caps graphic on its website suggesting you “TRY OUR TOTS,” the campaign couldn’t have been more organic, driven by word-of-mouth and online chatter. Now the bar goes through 150 pounds of tater tots every week. In the last year, no fewer than three people on separate occasions have told me, “Skylark has amazing tater tots.”
OK, just how amazing can tater tots be? Did Grant Achatz personally hand-stuff with Perigord truffles and fry them all in Kobe A-5 beef tallow?
I thought this would be a good conversation starter with my waiter: “So, what makes the tots here so good?”
During one visit: “We change the oil here regularly, so I guess that helps.”
A second visit, accompanying a shrug: “Beats me, man.”
On the really-good-or-really-bad rating system, the Skylark tater tots are, for sure, really good. They are tailor-made for cold suds to chase. From the fryer, they emerge as hot lil’ buggers—pop ’em in your mouth prematurely and you do the open-maw huff and puff.
Side-by-side with school lunchroom versions, these tots appear to have been fried an extra 30 seconds. They bear a hue one shade east of golden, approaching orange. You realize just how rare it is to be served deep-fried tater tots, instead of the frozen Ore-Ida versions you’d bake at home. You don’t feel short-changed with the crispiness-to-soft-potato-interior ratio—ideally more of the former.
While most french fries are a crap shoot, every bite of tot here is a carbon copy of the previous. A high-treble crunch emanates from the molars, then a mellow hit of salt-and-pepper-seasoned potato. You’re paying for that audible texture; the flavors are neutral enough that it’s more a vessel for the trio of dipping sauces. Honey mustard is fine, but store-bought. House-made ranch tastes watered down, lacking that assertive garlic zing. The zesty barbecue sauce, thick with chunks of tomato, is decent. My preference, however, already sits on the table: ketchup with three splashes of Louisiana hot sauce, a sufficient balance of sodium and vinegar. It is the ideal accompaniment.
If you dine with one other person, you’ll notice this 10 minutes in: The basket’s contents do not appear to diminish. There’s like 50 staring back at you. And yet, you muscle through them, because like packing bubbles, you are evolutionarily wired to pop every last one, or else you don’t feel complete. It’s like the Village People singing Y-M-C and calling it a night.
What’s our conclusion? The pretentious critical analyst in me knows they’re just tater tots done well, no need to alert the James Beard committee. But I’m willing to submit to the narrative, and allow my brain to take hype and interpret it through a tastier prism.
So the answer to the question turns out to be an endless loop.
On one hand, they’re very good ... but they’re just tater tots ... but they are very good ... yeah, but they’re just tater tots. And on and on. Maybe it’s time to stop overthinking things.