The dumbing down of heirloom tomatoes

[slkinsey]

So, as chance would have it, after a trip down to Academy Records to get rid of a zillion CDs I don't want anymore, I decided to take a walk over to the Union Square Greenmarket to see what was what. Boy am I glad I did! I now have another favorite grower of heirloom tomatoes: Norwich Meadows Farm. They are an organic grower in, as you may imagine, Norwich, New York.

They had what seemed like an enormous space and a ridiculous amount and variety of heirloom tomatoes for sale. I decided to give them a go to see if they were up to the level of my other guys. So I picked up a Brandywine and a few tomatoes called Costoluto Genovese that I always liked to buy in the markets in Italy during the summers. These have a very distinctive ribbed shape you can see about halfway down this page, and are very tender and juicy.

Anyway, since none of the tomatoes were labeled as to cultivar, I asked after the name of the Italian tomatoes and mentioned my fondness for them. He said, "Well... Those are good, but if you want the stuff with the best flavor, I'd recommend a few other ones right now." I thought that was interesting and we talked a bit about the different varieties he had and what he thought about their flavor characteristics. We both agreed that we didn't care for the flavor of Green Zebra because it lacks a tomatoey flavor, and he sells a few other green-colored cultivars instead. Eventually, he said that if what I was looking for was an intense, concentrated tomatoey flavor I should buy his black cultivars. He was selling Paul Robeson, Russian Black (apparently different from Black Russian) and Black Cherry tomatoes. He gave me a sample, and quickly convinced me to add several of those to my order. Several tomato sandwiches later, I don't regret any of it.

Apparently they grow all their tomatoes now using the hoophouse/tunnel method, where the sides can be rolled up so the vines are open to the air, but the sides can be rolled down to protect the tomatoes from excess rain, early frost, etc.

So far, the only USGM growers I really haven't liked for heirloom tomatoes (and they are one of the original growers selling them at the greenmarket) are the guys who sell all the different kinds of peppers right at the apex of the two doglegs.

[melkor]

That doesn't sound to me like the good tomatoes have gone into hiding as Steven has suggested. Perhaps the title of this thread should be "NEWSFLASH: lazy shopper buys flavorless tomato, titanic hits iceberg!".

[Fat Guy]

Last Wednesday I was heading to the Village for morning errands and a lunch date, so I decided to swing by the Greenmarket and get a broad sample of tomatoes. Armed with my trusty Laguiole folding knife, a small Zip-Loc bag of coarse salt, a few paper towels and a bottle of water I tried to buy tomatoes from every vendor that had a significant selection of heirlooms. There were five vendors that met the criteria, as well as several others that had a few heirlooms. Just for kicks, I included one of them as well.

At each stand, I tried to find the best tomatoes I could. I originally thought maybe I'd try to find a type in common among all the places, but that was pretty much impossible. So I just asked for guidance at each place, asking what were the favorites and stressing that I planned to eat them that day.

I emerged from the subway on 15th Street on the east side of the market, so I started at Stokes Farm. I had probably only bought heirlooms from them once before (I have the most experience with Eckerton Hill Farm, the one I've heard recommended the most often by chefs), but Stokes has a good reputation. Stokes also has the most compelling display of heirlooms, neatly categorized and labeled by type. They're also the most expensive, $4.75 a pound. I was hoping to buy 3 tomatoes from each vendor, but after spending almost $10 just on 3 tomatoes at Stokes I scaled back.

Next I hit Paffenroth Garden for unrelated reasons. I didn't think they even had heirlooms, but there was a bin of them, all of the same unspecified type. Weirdly, they were priced at $1 per pound. I decided to grab one just as an experiment.

Next was Berried (get it?) Treasure Farm, where I've had some good strawberries in the past. Berried Treasure had a compelling display of heirlooms and was proactively offering tastes. This seemed to me to indicate confidence in the product.

Next was Cherry Lane Farm, which had a big selection.

Next, Oak Grove Farm.

Finally, Eckerton Hill Farm, which is Tim Stark's farm and is utilized as the tomato supplier by several of the best restaurants. Eckerton's tomatoes are sometimes named as such on menus. Eckerton's selection was surprisingly small quantity-wise (it was diverse, though). Then again it's a small booth, so I suppose that's not surprising.

As I mentioned, there were some other places selling heirlooms on the side, but these seemed to be the ones that were doing it seriously. I'm sure on other market days there are some other vendors. This wasn't a comprehensive experiment, just a quick reality check. In terms of flavor, I was looking for sweetness, complexity and good texture -- when I say a tomato is excellent, I mean it's sweet, has complex flavors, and has a soft fruit texture. I wasn't going beyond that to consider specific varietal attributes and such -- I don't have than level of knowledge.

Okay, so, armed with my gear and my tomatoes, I secured a picnic table at the southwest corner of the market and got to work. Several onlookers seemed puzzled.

Here are the little beauties all in a row. From top left to bottom right there are 1- three tomatoes from Stokes, 2- one from Oak Grove, 3- two from Berried Treasure, 4- two from Cherry Lane, 5- one from Paffenroth, and 6- one from Eckerton.

So that's:

1- Stokes

2- Oak Grove and 3- Berried Treasure

4- Cherry Lane

5- Paffenroth

and 6- Eckerton

As a size benchmark, I'll note that the Eckerton tomato was exactly 1.00 pounds.

So, I started tasting tomatoes. First the three tomatoes from Stokes. Here I had mixed results, which surprised me. I thought Stokes would be flawless. Actually, one tomato was in the incredible-awesome-mindblowing category, one was very good but certainly not revelatory, and one was mealy-chalky-unsweet -- not a worthwhile tomato at all.

The best one:

The next best one:

The worst one (it's sort of possible to see the mealiness at the center of this one):

Then I tried the tomato from Oak Grove, which was excellent. Not as good as the best Stokes tomato, but better than the second best.

Next, and now I'm out of order but I couldn't wait to try this one, I sampled Paffenroth's $1-per-pound tomato. Now this is kind of interesting: it was the best tomato I'd tasted. It was better than the best one from Stokes. It was a tomato I wanted to capture the essence of for all time. Just incredible flavor structure, very sweet, and good texture. Bizarre. It didn't even look all that great. Until the moment I tasted it, I thought it was going to be disappointing.

The tomatoes from Berried Treasure were totally awful. This was somewhat surprising because Berried Treasure was so good about offering tastes. But the ones they actually sold me sucked. Worse than hydroponic supermarket tomatoes.

Cherry lane. Very good tomatoes. The green one needed another day of ripening, but was clearly on the cusp of excellence. The red one was very good, like on the level of the second one from Stokes.

Finally, the one-pound Eckerton tomato. This was one of the three best tomatoes of the mini-tasting, in the category of the best Stokes tomato and the from-left-field Paffenroth tomato.

I'm not sure what any of this means. I just thought it would be interesting. Certainly, there are heirloom tomatoes at the Greenmarket these days that suck. That didn't used to be the case, in my experience. There are also great ones. I'm not sure greatness can be ensured by sticking with one reputable vendor -- Stokes sold me a disappointing tomato, in past visits I've have a couple of bad examples from Eckerton, and most of all if you stick with one vendor you won't make cool discoveries like the $1-per-pound Paffenroth tomato.

[annecros]

The mealy one was probably overripe.

You are also demonstrating a slight varietal preference. I'm guessing you would enjoy a well grown Kellogg's Breakfast or an Earl of Edgecomb - both smooth skinned orange tomatoes with a complex, sweet and fruity flavor. The flesh is almost silky.

[slkinsey]

Sounds like a fun time, Steven.

From what you describe, other than the terrible tomatoes from Berried Tresure, a luck-of-the-draw overripe tomato from Stokes and perhaps a slight bias against green-colored cultivars (which I share), these would all appear to be in the excellent-to-mindblowing category. That strikes me as being pretty good. These are natural products, and there is going to be some variation even in the tomatoes from an excellent grower like Stokes. As you've pointed out in the past, even Alain Ducasse can have an off-night -- and even Stokes can have a not-so-good tomato every so often.

I have to say that I don't see how you could possibly have expected do to any better than you did on your trip -- and I don't care if it was 1997 or 2007. Out of ten tomatoes, you got two bad tomatoes from the same grower, one mediocre tomato past its prime from an established great grower, four tomatoes in the excellent-minus to excellent-plus category, and three in the mindblowing category. I can't believe that it was possible in 1997 to go to the Union Square Greenmarket, buy ten tomatoes and have them all turn out to be in the mindblowing category of your Stokes #1, Paffenroth and Eckerton samples.

I also have to believe that part of our collective remembrance of heirloom tomatoes from 10-15 years ago has to do with their relative novelty at the time. Even something like the past-its-prime Stokes tomato would have tasted pretty good compared to supermarket tomatoes in 1992, and more importantly it would have looked and tasted different from anything we were getting around here. I can remember when Samuel Adams beer first came onto my radar in the 80s. It was a revelation, because all the American beer I had had up to that time was crap. I thought Samuel Adams must be the most delicious beer ever made, and had friends in college who regularly took orders and made weekend road trips from Wisconsin to New England to pick up cases of Sam Adams. Now, more than 20 years later, I've had enough American craft beer to have a different frame of reference. Whereas Sam Adams blew me away in 1987, it would register as "middle of the road" today and I'm unlikely to be impressed by their products. I could, I suppose, interpret this difference as "there's been a huge decline in quality of Samuel Adams," but since the brewing process is not so variable and the methods haven't changed, I recognize that it's me that has changed. I think the same thing may be at work here with heirloom tomatoes.

It might be interesting to do a similar kind of sample in the three or so weeks we have remaining of heirloom tomato season, but talking with each grower and asking advice about which of their heirloom tomato cultivars to buy from them (e.g., if you're me it's: "I want something with an intense, concentrated tomatoey flavor, and I'm not so fond of the green varieties"). That might provide a more meaningful basis of comparison.

[Patapsco Mike]

Stokes (1) "best", Oak Grove "excellent" and the one pound Eckerton "one of the three best" sure look like the same exact type of tomato to me. I wonder if they all came from the same wholesale vendor?

I think slkinsey really nailed it. Also, there is just such shocking variety from week to week even off the same plant. Right now I'm picking spectacular tomatoes from my German Queen plants- just luscious and almost perfectly formed. Two weeks ago the ones I was picking were catfacing and soft, and some were developing the dreaded blossom end rot. The difference? Now we are having some warm nights, and I've been home more often and better able to water them.

Thanks for the post, it was interesting to read. I hope your date didn't notice your tomato breath

[annecros]

Stokes (1) "best", Oak Grove "excellent" and the one pound Eckerton "one of the three best" sure look like the same exact type of tomato to me.  I wonder if they all came from the same wholesale vendor?

It looks like Pineapple to me. A very common, widely grown, heirloom.

[slkinsey]

Stokes (1) "best", Oak Grove "excellent" and the one pound Eckerton "one of the three best" sure look like the same exact type of tomato to me.  I wonder if they all came from the same wholesale vendor?

In the NYC Greenmarkets, you're not allowed to sell it unless you grow it yourself. These are all actual farmers selling their own stuff.

It looks like Pineapple to me. A very common, widely grown, heirloom.

The guy at Norwich Meadows also recommended this cultivar as one of their best right now. I would have tried one, but was already laden with many tomatoes.

Edited September 11, 2007 by slkinsey (log)

[plk]

I just don't see how it ever could have been possible to walk into a farmer's market and come out with 10 out of 10 amazing tomatoes. Even when heirlooms were first becoming popular, I don't think that is biologically possible, and collective memory is not reliable evidence. 7 out of 10 seems pretty optimum to me for something as delicate as an heirloom tomato. Outside temp gets too cold or they're stored below about 50 degrees, and they get mealy. Maybe the farms who have consistently good tomatoes have extremely controlled conditions for growth, storage, and transport, and that would point to a greater complexity in production and better tomatoes over time for those particular farms.

[Fat Guy]

I believe the variety in question was Striped German. Though all grown on different farms, there is probably a reason why I preferred those three. Perhaps it's because I have a varietal preference, but I rather doubt that's it. I think that particular type may just be coming really well at this moment.

I don't think I've got a nostalgia-skewed palate when it comes to tomatoes. The benchmark tomatoes from my father-in-law's garden in Connecticut have been with me every year for as long as I've been buying heirlooms. So it's not like one of these foods where I had crap and then something good came along so seemed better than it was.

I don't think there was a time when you got 10 out of 10 great tomatoes. Rather, I think the quality range was typically like the Stokes quality range I experienced last week: they ranged from excellent to very good to imperfect. Prices are up. Then again, nobody had the discipline of Stokes back then, with the neatly categorized and labeled tomatoes. But never, ever back in the day did I get a single crap tomato like the ones from Berried Treasure that I got the other day. Not a single one like that in years. And I guess that's to be expected with expansion of the market.

[nibor]

It cracks me up that you guys are still arguing about heirloom tomatoes, and whether the Fat Guy knows how to shop for his groceries. I was suffering from a mild case of existential despair, and this really put things in perspective.

We have things here in Zurich that look like heirloom tomatoes but they taste like rocks. I would love to eat your worst tomato.

[slkinsey]

I don't think there was a time when you got 10 out of 10 great tomatoes. Rather, I think the quality range was typically like the Stokes quality range I experienced last week: they ranged from excellent to very good to imperfect. Prices are up. Then again, nobody had the discipline of Stokes back then, with the neatly categorized and labeled tomatoes. But never, ever back in the day did I get a single crap tomato like the ones from Berried Treasure that I got the other day. Not a single one like that in years. And I guess that's to be expected with expansion of the market.

Yea, that seems about right. There was certainly no visual-inspection basis for knowing those Berried Treasures tomatoes wouldn't be good.

But, according to your own shopping experiment, you got eight out of ten in the range that you would describe as being within your 1997 expectations. Or, rather, you got 20% crap tomatoes, all from one grower. This may just be luck of the draw. Maybe you happened to get two bad tomatoes from them, maybe they've been having a bad week, maybe they're not very good growers, whatever. The microclimates at Stokes Farms (very near NYC in Jersey), Berried Treasure Farms (upstate NY near the West tip of Catskill State Park), Norwich Meadows Farm (even further upstate in the Chenango River Valley) and Eckerton Hill Farms (half way between Allentown and Harrisburg, PA) have to be quite different.

That said, anyone who has been around non-commercial tomatoes for any length of time (e.g., every single tomato-grower who has posted to this thread, as well as my own experiences growing up with my mother's home-grown tomatoes) will tell you that sometimes the best tomatoes grown by the best grower will turn out to be crap anyway. Or, to put it another way, while you may not have bought any of them yourself, it's literally impossible that there weren't any crap heirloom tomatoes at the greenmarket in 1997. In my ten-plus years of regular shopping at the Union Square Greenmarket, I've had crap examples of just about everything. I've certainly had heirloom tomatoes from the USGM over the years that didn't appeal to me -- although to what extent those may have been due to cultivar or simply bad tomatoes is hard to quantify. Some of both, I imagine, although I've historically attributed it to cultivar (wishful thinking perhaps?). All of which is to say that I'm not willing to extend two bad tomatoes from one farm into "dramatic decline in average heirloom tomato quality at the Union Square Greenmarket."

Edited September 11, 2007 by slkinsey (log)

[Fat Guy]

But this was not a one-off. This was just the most carefully documented outing I've made, which I wanted to do as a reality check with photos and a more methodical approach than just gathering general impressions -- not that the approach was all that methodical. But what I've been saying is that I've generally been hitting more mediocre heirlooms on Greenmarket visits in recent years (quite aside from the overall marketplace issue, which is the real train wreck). I think I actually did better on this trip than on any other in recent memory, because this is such a good time to buy heirlooms.

You guys who go to the Greenmarket a lot, why don't you run some of these theories by the vendors you chat up all the time? Ask if they think there has been dilution/dumbing down/whatever of heirlooms. I'd be interested to hear their opinions.

[melkor]

But this was not a one-off. This was just the most carefully documented outing I've made, which I wanted to do as a reality check with photos and a more methodical approach than just gathering general impressions -- not that the approach was all that methodical. But what I've been saying is that I've generally been hitting more mediocre heirlooms on Greenmarket visits in recent years (quite aside from the overall marketplace issue, which is the real train wreck). I think I actually did better on this trip than on any other in recent memory, because this is such a good time to buy heirlooms.

You guys who go to the Greenmarket a lot, why don't you run some of these theories by the vendors you chat up all the time? Ask if they think there has been dilution/dumbing down/whatever of heirlooms. I'd be interested to hear their opinions.

←

Am I misreading your report or are you saying that any reasonable shopper who makes an effort to buy tomatoes at the greenmarket has a very good chance of bringing good quality heirloom tomatoes home with them?

[Fat Guy]

And a good chance of bringing mediocre or outright bad ones home too.

[Jean Parquette]

I was going to say, Fat Guy, that you seem to like German Striped. I do too, and I like Brandywine, too, but my favorite tomato this year, a new find and very local, is the Pratico, which was developed by an Italian immigrant in the early to mid 1900s in Rutland, Vermont, and Man, is it ugly -- a blotchy purply/orangy tube of goodness, about 2 inches in diameter and about 5 inches long -- a cross between, as far as I can figure out, a beefsteak and a roma.

The seeds were handed off to a farmers' market grower by an "elderly person" a few years ago, and he's been growing a limited quantity ever since. I intend to save some seeds and hand them off to a few friends around the country. It seems to be a pretty stable hybrid, exhibiting the same traits every year.

This is my first post, and haven't figured out how to upload a photo, so we'll have to go with the verbal description here.

I have Brandywines that were just ripening over a dry August, but it's been raining steadily for the last four days and i believe their flavor will be compromised. I don't see how the grower can easily ruin a Brandywine without weather's help, except, perhaps, by growing them under plastic, which i don't think does anything a lot of flavor good.

[slkinsey]

I have Brandywines that were just ripening over a dry August, but it's been raining steadily for the last four days and i believe their flavor will be compromised. I don't see how the grower can easily ruin a Brandywine without weather's help, except, perhaps, by growing them under plastic, which i don't think does anything a lot of flavor good.

That's what I'm saying, and why I don't buy the "decline in quality at the Greenmarket," if such a thing exists, as anything other than bad luck and weather (I haven't had a single heirloom from the USGM this Summer that wasn't delicious, but obviously can't speak for other people's experiences). There are, of course, other things that can ruin a Brandywine other than weather and the genetic/horticultural luck of the draw, but these tend to be the same things that make for bad supermarket tomatoes, namely: picking it early, refrigerating it, long transportation, perhaps hybridizing with a thicker-skinned variety for better storage/transportation properties, etc. But none of the USGM growers are doing these things. They're all ripening them on the vine, many of them are using hoophouse/tunnel systems with adjustible protection against frost and excess rain, they're picking the tomatoes the day before they are sold and transporting them a relatively short distance to the market, etc. I don't see what else they can possibly be doing better than they are already doing. Berried Treasures Farm, from whom Steven bought the horrible tomatoes, are extremely well-regarded growers. Their produce is highly sought after by high-end restaurants. The tomatoes didn't end up terrible because the people at Berried Treasures are screwups or don't know how to grow good heirloom tomatoes, and I'd be willing to bet that the vast majority of their tomatoes were delicious this Summer (they certainly know good produce when they taste it, and if they were offering samples, that would indicate a certain level of confidence in their product).

It seems to me that, if Steven is getting a bit more than the 20% mediocre heirloom tomatoes he experienced at his last visit to the USGM, and the likes of Mitch and myself are getting somewhere in the range of 0% to 1%, the reality is somewhere around 7% to 10% -- which is as good as I think one can reasonably expect with this kind of product. Again, maybe it's good luck this season for Mitch and me... maybe we've gone during times when heirloom tomatoes have been really good, we've happened to favor the growers who were having optimal weather that week and we've just not been unlucky enough to put our hands on a bad one. Maybe it's bad luck for Steven this Summer, maybe it was better luck for him in the past. You make a normal distribution curve, and simple statics will tell you that some people are going to have worse luck than others: 15.9% of the tomato buyers will experience more than one standard deviation better in average tomato quality, and 15.9% will experience more than one standard deviation worse; 2.3% will be more than two standard deviations better and 2.3% will be more than two standard deviations worse than average tomato quality. 2.3% of heirloom tomato buyers at the USGM is not a small number of people getting a high percentage of bad tomatoes! The question, I suppose, is whether the average quality has declined, and whether the curve has dramatically widened along with such a decline -- but Steven seems to be saying that he has experienced a greater percentage of "bad tomatoes" rather than that there has been a wholesale slide in heirloom quality across the board (this would not only make the average tomato lower in quality but would also make the "mindblowing tomato" increasingly rare, which does not seem to be the case). Rather, given the experience of Mitch and myself, it suggests that chance may have played a part.

[Fat Guy]

How many vendors have you purchased heirloom tomatoes from this summer, Sam? Have you gone exclusively to Stokes, or have you bought them all over? In previous summers? Mitch, how about you?

[slkinsey]

I've probably bought from 4-5 different vendors this Summer (ironically, I've never bought the ones from Paffenroth, an error of omission that your report will correct on my next visit!). I do often go to Stokes for one or two, because I have a pretty good relationship with the farmer and I usually buy herbs from them anyway. But they don't always have my favorite varieties (no Costoluto Genovese, for example). If I'm ever in front of a booth that seems to have a lot of heirlooms, and it's a grower I think has reliably good quality in general, and I see a cultivar I've been wanting -- I'll buy a few.

I'm fairly cultivar-biased. I don't care for the green cultivars in general and find that the yellow or orange-fleshed ones don't often have the flavor profile I like, so I stay away from those cultivars (other people love them). I do need to try those German Striped tomatoes next time, though, because I'm told that they have a more tomatoey flavor than many of the yellow or orange tomatoes. I love Brandywines, and generally find that the purple/black varieties have the tomatoey flavor profile I'm looking for.

All of which is to say that, if I see someone like Norwich Meadows Farm with a big table of cultivars I like, and especially if I can talk to the grower and he seems like he knows what he's doing and has specific recommendations based on my stated preferences, I'll buy from anyone down there. There are probably a few growers I haven't bought tomatoes from simply becasuse they don't sell other things I like, so I haven't got to know them.

Edited September 12, 2007 by slkinsey (log)