web analytics
Burger Chop Tater Tacos

Burger Chop Tater Tacos

by

State Fair of Texas, 2026 Big Tex Choice Awards: Best Taste, Savory

A taco shell is supposed to be corn or flour.

Texas decided a taco shell could also be a pile of tater tots, mashed together and fried until they hold their shape.

Then it filled that shell with a cheeseburger.

Then it won.

What This Thing Actually Is

Strip it down to parts and it stops sounding like a taco at all.

Take a burger patty. Sear it, chop it into pieces small enough to pile. Toss it with sauteed onions and jalapenos, then bury it under mozzarella and American cheese.

Now build the shell. Not tortilla. Cheddar cheese tater tots, formed and fried into a taco shape.

Load the burger mix into the tot shell. Finish with buffalo buttermilk ranch coleslaw, garlic parmesan buffalo sauce, and, because apparently the first round of tots wasn’t enough, more tots on top.

A cheeseburger wearing a tater tot as a costume, and the costume won an award.

Tom Grace built it. It runs $16 for two.

The Part That’s Actually Funny

Somebody looked at a taco and a cheeseburger and a plate of tater tots, three separate food categories, and decided none of them needed to stay in their lane.

A taco shell’s only real job is holding the filling together. Tots weren’t built for that job. They were built to sit next to a burger, not become one.

This dish skipped the argument about which side dish deserves top billing. It made the side dish load bearing.

The Fair’s own judging runs on taste, value, creativity, and whether a fairgoer would actually want to eat it, out of a record 77 entries from 46 concessionaires this year. This one beat out four other savory finalists to take Best Taste, Savory for 2026.

One of those four finalists it beat, Flamin’ Crunch Pizza, also came out of Tom Grace’s kitchen.

Same guy entered two dishes in the same category. One of them won.

That’s not luck. That’s a guy who knows exactly what a fried Texas judge wants to eat.

Why Texas Keeps Doing This

Everything is bigger in Texas. Nobody said it had to be more complicated.

A cheeseburger is already a complete food. Nobody needed a tater tot to step in and start pretending to be a tortilla.

Texas did it anyway, because a fairgoer walking past will always stop for the dish that shouldn’t work on paper and somehow does.

The Honest Version

I could confirm the recipe, the price, the creator, and the award from the Fair’s own announcement and local coverage of the 2026 competition.

What I could not confirm: any backstory on Tom Grace as a concessionaire, how long he’s worked the Fair, or what pushed him toward stacking two entries into one savory category this year.

None of the outlets covering the win published an interview with him. If that changes, this gets an update.

Sometimes the win speaks for itself and the guy behind it stays out of the spotlight.

This time, the tots did the talking.

Sources:

Leave a Comment