We went for our anniversary dinner to Lumiere last night and to no surprise, one of the courses was an heirloom tomato plate. We also had an heirloom tomato plate at SF's Town Hall a few weeks ago when we went on a maternity clothes shopping weekend. That's 2 fine restaurants that are on the bandwagon. I'm sure more are going to follow.
Heirloom tomatoes are basically the old school pre-GM varieties that existed before it became just beefsteak and roma varieties in your grocery store. They come in over 4000 varieties that have all sorts of different sizes, flavours and smells.
Our local Trout Lake farmers market has Sapo Bravo Organics, shown above, Stoney Paradise's Milan Djordjevich (Roland has a flicker set tagged with tomato) and even a special day for heirloom tomatoes.
If you can try some, they are well worth it. We did a salad plate at a friends party that consisted of our garden-grown cherry tomatoes surrounded by sliced Sun Gold tomatoes drizzled with a fig balsamic vinaigrette and it was just soo good.
Next up: Grapes and Cucumbers
There are many other heirloom styles. We've had heirloom grapes and cucumbers. You think cucumbers are just long and skinny and green? The lemon cucumbers taste and look great
Milan had coronation and other grapes, and they worked really well in salads.
But it doesn't stop there. We've also had old style carrots, think yellow and purple. And corn comes in more than just peaches and cream.
Completely dehomogenizing the grocery store
The push to a single or small number of types of fruits and veg was really a bid to reduce cost for consumer by the grocery store. They can typically source from a single large provider with fairly reliable shipping and shelf-life and lowered complexity on the sales side.
With the advent of specialty food stores and products like juices, vitamins, meats, yoghurts, grains, meats (our local butcher now offers ostrich, buffalo, heirloom turkeys,..) snack foods, cereals, coffees, etc., I think that specialty produce is the next and possibly last item that vendors will use to distinguish themselves. It's already started a bit with the lettuce varieties joining the potato varieties.
We are certainly in favour of seeking these out and paying more for them. They increase bio-diversity, add variety to meals, and usually support local producers.