Wednesday, July 8, 2009

Kumato displays

Black Garlic display




So while I was in Toronto, I visited a couple of grocery stores. One was just a normal store and one was a gourmet store just opened my chef Mark McEwan:






I found displays of Kumato's there and took a few pics. One sign said it was the #1 tomato in Canada. It is now becoming available in the U.S. under the name Rosso Bruno.
The Mark McEwans store had it on display with Black Garlic, the newest, hottest chef item.
As far as the new McEwan store, I wasn't impressed. I guess I am spoiled by West Point Market which is one of the top 10 gourmet stores in the country. There was no comparison. The only thing that impressed me was that I found the Black Garlic there.


5 comments:

Unknown said...

Well, these are not as cool as any of yo's, but here they are :P

http://s98.photobucket.com/albums/l278/bluelytes/?action=view&current=IMG_0970.jpg

Best;
bluey

Remy said...

Hi Terry,
We have the same pkgs.of Kumatoes here at Wegmans, no renaming. In fact I have a pkg. here at home. They taste ok, a bit mild and sweet, but better than cardboard grocery store tomatoes.

Tomatoaddict said...

I think Remy that maybe Syngenta Group obviously is now releasing them in the U.S. I just went to their website and it still shows they are not retailing in the U.S. Weird... I tried the ones I bought in Canada and I have to say the ones I grew last year in the garden were much better!

Anonymous said...

Terry,

I'm from the US but have been traveling in Spain recently, where I bought a package of Kumato's at an outlet of a big French supermarket chain. They were decent tomatoes, much better than the usual hard tasteless fare that are available in the markets in Spain (as bad as supermarket tomatoes anywhere else) but they weren't great, imho. This doesn't seem to me to be any great breakthrough in the availability of good tomatoes commercially. It seems to be more of successful marketing campaign. The trademarked variety "Ugly Ripe" (apparently either Marmande or closely related to it) from Florida that is sometimes available in the eastern US seems like a better tomato to me.

Best,

Jon

Tomatoaddict said...

Hi Jon,
I agree that they are better than the normal loser tomatoes in the supermarket. I will say that the Kumato's I grew in the garden were much better than the store bought ones.