I can’t tell if I’m impressed or insulted, because Tater Town has the absolute AUDACITY to model an entire restaurant around stuffing other foods inside arguably the biggest baked potato you’ve ever seen and make it delicious. Like, REALLY delicious. I’m impressed because they took such a wild concept and made it work so well. I’m insulted because never once in my life have I ever thought to myself “You know what sounds good? A Reuben. And a baked potato. At the SAME TIME” and had the gall to do it because it sounds like a culinary abomination that should not exist. And yet here we are.
For starters, I had absolutely no idea what I was getting myself into when earlier this week when Chelsea told me we were going to “Tater Town” after I get out of work on Friday and just rolled with it. Imagine my surprise when my curiosity got the better of me on the way there and I saw the entire menu was literally “Lemme stuff some sh*t inside a giant-*ss baked potato and charge people for the privilege.” They’ve got all sorts of options ranging from the aforementioned Reuben to a Hot Turkey Dinner or Pulled Pork Mac n Cheese. All shoved into a baked potato. Because why not?
Located in the heart of middle-of-nowhere NY in Pulaski, this wonderfully goofy idea of a restaurant did not pull any punches on the potato theme. All of the staff have potato puns on their shirts such as “Spud Muffin” with an image of Mr Potato Head or “Taters Gonna Tate” with a smiling cartoon tater tot. The pictures adorning the wall seem like standard Americana photos until you realize that Marilyn Monroe isn’t standing over a vent as her skirt rises, she’s standing on a steaming baked potato. Also, that isn’t Marilyn Monroe, it’s the mastermind behind Tater Town’s face superimposed onto Marilyn Monroe standing on a steaming baked potato. Still in mild shock at the mere premise of this place let alone the impeccable decision making that went into the decor, we settled on our taters and I proceeded to make as many silly potato-based comments to Chelsea as I could. Color me surprised when we were unexpectedly delivered a sample of an appetizer called “Campfire Chips” of house-fried and lightly seasoned potato chips with a sweet mayo/BBQ sauce. The chips were crispy and still hot, seasoned with a bit of salt and pepper and the sauce a nice smoky sweet flavor to go with the crispy chips. My flabbers were thoroughly ghasted at how tasty something so simple could be so good.
Chelsea felt adventurous and decided to try the Taco Tater. The premise is simple: take a standard taco salad, shove it in a tater. Seasoned ground beef, shredded lettuce, cheddar cheese, diced tomatoes, salsa, taco sauce and sour cream all served inside a whopping 20oz baked potato. The fillings were insanely good. The beef was seasoned beautifully, the cheese lightly melted, lettuce still crisp and not a soggy mess, sour cream drizzled on top of a basic but tasty salsa and taco sauce. But the potato? That was ridiculous. Not only is it huge, it was immaculate. Soft all the way through, lightly salty but not aggressively so, and even served with a ramekin of butter and sour cream because it’s sacrilegious to serve a baked potato without clarified butter and sour cream even if there’s already sour cream in the potato. Don’t ask questions.
In my bewilderment, I went with the Chicken Bacon Ranch Tater. And if you guessed that the premise of this particular potato plate was “take some chicken, bacon and ranch dressing and shove it in a tater” then you would be 100% correct. A big ol’ 20oz cannonball of a potato stuffed to the brim with chopped grilled chicken, big chunks of crispy bacon and a mildly unhealthy amount of ranch dressing, this spud was a little intimidating to look at. But just like Chelsea, I was greeted with what can only be described as (pardon my language here) a culinary clusterf*ck that was just as wonderful as it was wild. The chicken was tender, the bacon crunchy but not overcooked, ranch dressing was more than your basic Hidden Valley buttermilk ranch and the potato just as soft as your favorite pillow was the day you bought it.
We both got through about 2/3rds of our taters before deciding we had to see if their desserts were as amazing as their potatoes. Chelsea ordered the Summer Berry Crisp while I got a slice of peanut butter pie. I swear to all that is holy, I was fully prepared to flip the table and laugh so hard I pee’d if either dessert was served inside a giant potato, but strangly no potatoes were to be had for our dessert. Again, I can’t tell if I’m impressed that they had the restraint to not try to pull off that insanity or disappointed they didn’t. The Summer Berry Crisp doesn’t look like much, but it was indeed delicious. Sweet berry blend topped with a light layer of cinnamon, brown sugar and oat crumble. It was a very nice, gentle dessert to balance out the heavy potato. My peanut butter pie was a little denser but had a delicious flaky crust with a sweet whipped peanut butter cream filling. These are 100% homemade desserts and not your basic Sysco frozen fare and you can taste the quality from the start. Unfortunately in our haste to shovel this outrageously good meal in and/or around our mouths, it seems Chelsea didn’t manage to get a picture of the peanut butter pie which is sad because it was the cutest little slice of pie I’ve seen in a long time so you’ll just have to trust me when I say it was adorable.
It’s still wild to me to make an entire restaurant based around the most commonly thrown out food in restaurants (potatoes, whether in the form of fries, chips, mashed or baked are discarded in the thousands of pounds per year in restaurants nationwide) and somehow make it this d*mn good. It was so good we had to meet the absolutely crazy individuals behind Tater Town and I’m glad we did. The owners were super polite, loved to share their story of how this off-the-wall premise came to be and talk to anyone in the dining room. I jokingly asked if they had an entire oven just for the baking of the potatoes and shockingly they said they sure did. Well played, Potato Peddlers, well played. I had a hard time finding the words to start this review with something other than “Y’all mofos ain’t gonna believe this” as I ramble on for 45 minutes about a potato of all things because Tater Town definitely rustled my jimmies. But by golly they make a mean baked potato. Seriously, it sounds stupid and it kinda is but in the best way possible, but you absolutely MUST take a trip out to Pulaski and experience this ridiculousness. I never thought I would see the day where someone built an entire restaurant around cramming other foods inside a baked potato, let alone did it this well. 10/10, would come back and eat my entire body weight in potatoes to try every single item on the menu. This was an wonderfully spud-tacular meal.
7627 State Rte 3, Pulaski, NY 13142
(315) 298-0091