Potatoes weren’t expecting this to happen to them
On the one extreme, you have the farmers market. The produce is abundant and unprepared. You are handed a zucchini; you have absolutely no idea what to do with it. You can google, I guess. You can ask someone else at the farmers market. Asking the farmer will yield the typical farmer response: just eat it! Which is, of course, wildly unhelpful. So you walk around the farmers market holding a zucchini, in a sad bardo of vegetable liminality.
On the other, you have rotato. Rotato is a single large potato that has been carved like a corkscrew, skewered on a long stick, battered, deep fried, and seasoned. Like the zucchini, there are many things you can do with a rotato. Unlike the zucchini, eating the rotato is completely immaterial to the actual process of procuring one.
You first experience rotato through others holding rotato and grinning like idiots. Of course. They are eating a whole potato worth of french fries on a stick. You ask where. Pointing. You go. Nobody has ever walked up and instantly ordered a rotato in the history of mankind. You wait in line, usually a very long one. You invest significant time and heartbeats into each rotato. This text is about rotato as ritual, rotato as virality.
The potato must not be broken in the process of carving. One wonders how many potatoes sacrificed themselves for your own. The merest thought of a structurally failed rotato makes your head spin. “The machine must be interesting,” you wonder, even though you are never presented with it, only a rotato.
Rotato is convenient, yes, and fun; but it would not exist if not for social media. The visual format of social media absolutely demands that things like rotato exist. We made apps; apps made rotato. One is not living well if they are not holding a rotato after waiting an hour to get one. Everybody knows this.
I first encountered a rotato at the Richmond Night Market in the suburbs of Vancouver, although it wasn’t a rotato quite so much as it was hundreds of them. Their sheer alien recognizability means you cannot look away. “Fun” pops into your head, as does “absurd.” Despite this, you instantly know what the thing is, even though you have never seen it before. You have seen many potatoes; you have experienced many fried potatoes; you know where this is going. Rotato as apotheosis. Rotato as platonic solid. Flavored rotato. Rotato as open field of possibility. Sea salt & vinegar rotato. Buffalo dusted rotato. A dipping sauce bar for your rotato.
Later, much later, in the evening, one whiskey unit in, your higher self compels you to research. Rotato is also called tornado potato, you discover. It was invented in South Korea, which means it is probably on every street corner in every hip neighborhood right now. You see the machine. You see someone cramming a whole hot dog in there. This is enough to act as a clean substitute for your daily staring into the center of the sun. Rotato came far, found you, and now we witness a new form of tornado.