On a recent trip to Kansas City I took a break from a busy day of eating nonstop BBQ and riding a scooter around to visit a distillery, or rather distillery/restaurant/tasting room. Tom’s Town, named for the country’s most corrupt political boss Tom Pendergast, has tours of their distillery, and also a vintage art deco restaurant area where you have some drinks and small plates while you wait for your tour. I was just going to sit down with a Corpse Reviver No.2 while waiting, but then I saw the Totchos.

Under the corrupt wings of Tom Pendergast, Kansas City not-so-on-the-DL ignored Prohibition and emerged as the “Paris of the Plains”, and not just for the series of knockoff Eiffel Towers they erected throughout the city. There was booze, there was jazz, there was money, there were guys and dolls, and it all was flaunted in the face of the Volstead Act. When Tom was asked how he justified ignoring Prohibition, he was said to have shrugged and said, “The people are thirsty.” Taking a page from Tom, when I saw those totchos, a truly rare bird in the nacho family, well, this person was hungry. Then I saw I could also order them with jackfruit, the fruit that eats like a meat, and I had to put that to the test as well.

The Test. Here’s the deal with jackfruit. It looks just like pulled pork. It has a texture just like pulled pork. Depending on whatever kind of sauce you put on it’ll even taste just like pulled pork… for a while. Much like radiation poisoning the cumulative goodness of jackfruit decreases the more you eat. With your first few bites you are shocked at the similarity of the fruit to meat, but whether it is due to the surprise wearing off or just your tongue getting used to it you notice the differences more and more as you go. There is probably a good balance between nacho size and amount of jackfruit for optimal meat flavor before the flavor disguise wears off, but you definitely get more than that here.

That’s jackfruit, not bad, but not as good as you would like. Fortunately the rest of the totchos were delicious enough to make up for the declining flavor of the “meat”. A big problem with totchos is that typically the tots get mushy so fast that by the time you’re halfway through the meal they’re soggy and falling apart. Not so here. Tom’s Town Totchos were solid and crunchy from the first tot to the last, which is not something you can say often. Could this really be the case because the toppings were a little light overall? Perhaps, and if you look at the picture above you might think that, but somehow through the magic of totchos I didn’t seem to run into any tots without toppings for them. This is probably less magic and more you need to eat totchos a little different than regular nachos and may do more manual topping arrangement with the tots, but sure, magic.

Would I recommend going to Tom’s Town? Yes. Would I recommend going on the Tom’s Town Distillery tour? Also yes. Would I recommend getting an order of Totchos with a Corpse Reviver No. 2? Also, yes too. Basically everything about these folks I would recommend, including their weird gin that doesn’t taste like Canada. Every meal I ate while in Kansas City was some form of BBQ, with the exception of these totchos, and that is a decision I do not regret.