ST. JOHN | The air was thick with the smell of grease-soaked potatoes in a back room at Bar Louie on Thursday night.

Seven men and one woman sat side-by-side, bottles of ketchup and glasses of water on the table in front of them.

A crowd gathered and counted down from 10. Then the gorging began. Some took one at a time, some took handfuls at a time and some used both hands to shove fried tater tots into their mouths.

The challenge - called Rock the Tot 2008 - was to eat as many tots as possible in six minutes and keep them down for another five. The competitors were given empty metal beer buckets, just in case.

In the end, St. John resident Randy Berg was crowned the top eater. He ate three and a half pounds of tater tots, which was one half pound more than the competitor who took second place.

"It wasn't as easy as I thought it was gonna be," he said.

His prize is a year's supply of tater tots and a trophy.

Berg, who works in the Bar Louie kitchen, said he didn't do anything special to prepare. His trick was to psych out his opponents.

After General Manager Jason DaViera explained the rules and said that each competitor would be given five pounds of tots, Berg asked what would happen if they finished all of them before the time was up.

Competitors at the end of the table laughed.

Berg leaned over, turned his head and asked, "Are you intimidated?"

It was part of his strategy, he said later.

"The whole idea (is) you gotta get into their head," Berg said.

The event at the St. John location, 8209 Wicker Ave., was one of 40 going on at Bar Louie restaurants around the country, DaViera said.

The person who ate the most tots at all of those locations will be eligible to go into the Guinness Book of World Records, he said.

In St. John, the staff fried between 40 and 45 pounds of tater tots for the competition. A one-pound serving consists of 64 tots.

Six of the competitors never finished their first bowl, a two-and-a-half-pound serving.

Munster resident Josh Redden dipped his tater tots in ketchup, but the strategy didn't pay off.

Before the contest, Redden, a weight-lifter, laughed about the prospect of downing tots competitively.

"My goal used to be training for the Olympics, and now I'm training for tots," he said.